A Fine Balance

III. In a Village by a River

IN THEIR VILLAGE, THE TAILORS used to be cobblers; that is, their family belonged to the Chamaar caste of tanners and leather-workers. But long ago, long before Omprakash was born, when his father, Narayan, and his uncle, Ishvar, were still young boys of ten and twelve, the two were sent by their father to be apprenticed as tailors.

Their father’s friends feared for the family. “Dukhi Mochi has gone mad,” they lamented. “With wide-open eyes he is bringing destruction upon his household.” And consternation was general throughout the village: someone had dared to break the timeless chain of caste, retribution was bound to be swift.

Dukhi Mochi’s decision to turn his sons into tailors was indeed courageous, considering that the prime of his own life had been spent in obedient compliance with the traditions of the caste system. Like his forefathers before him, he had accepted from childhood the occupation preordained for his present incarnation.

Dukhi Mochi was five years old when he had begun to learn the Chamaar vocation at his father’s side. With a very small Muslim population in the area, there was no slaughterhouse nearby where the Chamaars could obtain hides. They had to wait until a cow or buffalo died a natural death in the village. Then the Chamaars would be summoned to remove the carcass. Sometimes the carcass was given free, sometimes they had to pay, depending on whether or not the animal’s upper-caste owner had been able to extract enough free labour from the Chamaars during the year.

The Chamaars skinned the carcass, ate the meat, and tanned the hide, which was turned into sandals, whips, harnesses, and waterskins. Dukhi learned to appreciate how dead animals provided his family’s livelihood. And as he mastered the skills, imperceptibly but relentlessly Dukhi’s own skin became impregnated with the odour that was part of his father’s smell, the leather-worker’s stink that would not depart even after he had washed and scrubbed in the all-cleansing river.

Dukhi did not realize his pores had imbibed the fumes till his mother, hugging him one day, wrinkled her nose and said, her voice a mix of pride and sorrow, “You are becoming an adult, my son, I can sniff the change.”

For a while afterwards, he was constantly lifting his forearm to his nose to see if the odour still lingered. He wondered if flaying would get rid of it. Or did it go deeper than skin? He pricked himself to smell his blood but the test was inconclusive, the little ruby at his fingertip being an insufficient sample. And what about muscle and bone, did the stink lurk in them too? Not that he wanted it gone; he was happy then to smell like his father.

Besides tanning and leather-working, Dukhi learned what it was to be a Chamaar, an untouchable in village society. No special instruction was necessary for this part of his education. Like the filth of dead animals which covered him and his father as they worked, the ethos of the caste system was smeared everywhere. And if that was not enough, the talk of adults, the conversations between his mother and father, filled the gaps in his knowledge of the world.

The village was by a small river, and the Chamaars were permitted to live in a section downstream from the Brahmins and landowners. In the evening, Dukhi’s father sat with the other Chamaar men under a tree in their part of the settlement, smoking, talking about the day that was ending and the new one that would dawn tomorrow. Bird cries fluttered around their chitchat. Beyond the bank, cooking smoke signalled hungry messages while upper-caste waste floated past on the sluggish river.

Dukhi watched from a distance, waiting for his father to come home. As the dusk deepened, the men’s outlines became vague. Soon Dukhi could see only the glowing tips of their beedis, darting around like fireflies with the movement of their hands. Then the burning tips went dark, one by one, and the men dispersed.

While Dukhi’s father ate, he repeated for his wife everything he had learned that day. “The Pandit’s cow is not healthy. He is trying to sell it before it dies.”

“Who gets it if it dies? Is it your turn yet?”

“No, it is Bhola’s turn. But where he was working, they accused him of stealing. Even if the Pandit lets him have the carcass, he will need my help — they chopped off his left-hand fingers today.”

“Bhola is lucky,” said Dukhi’s mother. “Last year Chhagan lost his hand at the wrist. Same reason.”

Dukhi’s father took a drink of water and swirled it around in his mouth before swallowing. He ran the back of his hand across his lips. “Dosu got a whipping for getting too close to the well. He never learns.” Eating in silence for a while, he listened to the frogs bellowing in the humid night, then asked his wife, “You are not having anything?”

“It’s my fasting day.” In her code, it meant there wasn’t enough food.

Dukhi’s father nodded, taking another mouthful. “Have you seen Buddhu’s wife recently?”

She shook her head. “Not since many days.”

“And you won’t for many more. She must be hiding in her hut. She refused to go to the field with the zamindar’s son, so they shaved her head and walked her naked through the square.”

Thus Dukhi listened every evening to his father relate the unembellished facts about events in the village. During his childhood years, he mastered a full catalogue of the real and imaginary crimes a low-caste person could commit, and the corresponding punishments were engraved upon his memory. By the time he entered his teens, he had acquired all the knowledge he would need to perceive that invisible line of caste he could never cross, to survive in the village like his ancestors, with humiliation and forbearance as his constant companions.

Soon after Dukhi Mochi turned eighteen, his parents married him to a Chamaar girl named Roopa, who was fourteen. She gave birth to three daughters during their first six years together. None survived beyond a few months.

Then they had a son, and the families rejoiced greatly. The child was called Ishvar, and Roopa watched over him with the special ardour and devotion she had learned was reserved for male children. She made sure he always had enough to eat. Going hungry herself was a matter of course — that she often did even to keep Dukhi fed. But for this child she did not hesitate to steal either. And there was not a mother she knew who would not have taken the same risk for her own son.

After her milk went dry, Roopa began nocturnal visits to the cows of various landowners. While Dukhi and the child slept, she crept out of the hut with a small brass haandi, some time between midnight and cock-crow. The pitch-black path she walked without stumbling had been memorized during the day, for a lamp was too dangerous. The darkness brushed her cheeks like a cobweb. Sometimes the cobwebs were real.

She took only a little from each cow; thus, the owner would not sense a decrease in the yield. When Dukhi saw the milk in the morning, he understood. If he awoke in the night as she was leaving, he said nothing, and lay shivering till she returned. He often wondered whether he should offer to go instead.

Soon Ishvar cut his milk teeth, and Roopa began to pay weekly visits to orchards in season and ready for harvest. In the darkness, her fingers felt the fruit for ripeness before plucking it. Again, she restricted herself to a few from each tree, so their absence would not be noticed. Around her, the dark was filled with the sound of her own breathing and little creatures scurrying out of her way to safety.

One night, as she was filling her sack with oranges, a lantern was suddenly raised amid the trees. In a small clearing a man sat on his bamboo-and-string cot, watching her. I’m finished, she thought, dropping her sack and preparing to run.

“Don’t be afraid,” said the man. He spoke softly, his hand gripping a heavy stick. “I don’t care if you take some.” She turned around, panting with fear, wondering whether to believe him.

“Go on, pick a few,” he repeated, smiling. “I have been hired by the owner to watch the grove. But I don’t care. He is a rich bastard.”

Roopa retrieved the sack nervously and resumed picking. Her shaking fingers dropped an orange as she tried to slip it past the mouth of the sack. She glanced over her shoulder. His eyes were greedily following her body; it made her uneasy. “I’m grateful to you,” she said.

He nodded. “You are lucky I am here, and not some bad man. Go on, take as many as you like.” He hummed something tunelessly. It sounded like a mixture of groans and sighs. He gave up the humming, trying to whistle the tune. The results were equally unmusical. He yawned and fell silent but continued to watch her.

Roopa decided she had enough fruit, it was time to thank him and leave. Reading her movements, he said, “One shout from me and they will come running.”

“What?” She saw his smile disappear suddenly.

“I only have to shout, and the owner and his sons would be here at once. They would strip you and whip you for stealing.”

She trembled, and the smile returned to his face. “Don’t worry, I won’t shout.” She fastened the mouth of the sack, and he continued, “After whipping you, they would probably show you disrespect, and stain your honour. They would take turns doing shameful things to your lovely soft body.”

Roopa joined her hands in thanks and farewell.

“Don’t go yet, take as many as you want,” he said.

“Thank you, I have enough.”

“You are sure? I can easily give you more if you like.” He put down his stick and got up from his cot.

“Thank you, this is enough.”

“Is it? But wait, you cannot go just like that,” he said with a laugh. “You haven’t given me anything in return.” He walked towards her.

Stepping back, she forced a laugh too. “I don’t have anything. That’s why I came here in the night, for the sake of my child.”

“You have got something.” He put out his hand and squeezed her left breast. She struck his hand away. “I only have to shout once,” he warned, and slipped his hand inside her blouse. She shuddered at the touch, doing nothing this time.

He led her cringing to the cot and ripped open her top three buttons. She crossed her arms in front. He pulled them down and buried his mouth in her breasts, laughing softly as she tried to squirm away. “I gave you so many oranges. You won’t even let me taste your sweet mangoes?”

“Please let me go.”

“Soon as I have fed you my Bhojpuri brinjal. Take off your clothes.”

“I beg you, let me go.”

“I only have to shout once.”

She wept softly while undressing, and lay down as he instructed. She continued to weep during the time he moved and panted on top of her. She heard the breeze rustle the leaves in trees that stood like worthless sentinels. A dog howled, setting off others in a chorus. Coconut oil in the man’s hair left streaks on her face and neck, and smeared her chest. Its odour was strong in her nostrils.

Minutes later, he rolled off her body. Roopa grabbed her clothes and the sack of oranges and ran naked through the orange grove. When she was certain he wasn’t following, she stopped and put her clothes on.

Dukhi pretended to be asleep as she entered the hut. He heard her muffled sobs several times during the night, and knew, from her smell, what had happened to her while she was gone. He felt the urge to go to her, speak to her, comfort her. But he did not know what words to use, and he also felt afraid of learning too much. He wept silently, venting his shame, anger, humiliation in tears; he wished he would die that night.

In the morning Roopa behaved as if nothing had occurred. So Dukhi said nothing, and they ate the oranges.

Two years after Ishvar was born, Roopa and Dukhi had another son. This one was named Narayan. There was a dark-red mark on his chest, and an elderly neighbour who assisted Roopa during the birth said she had seen such a mark before. “It means he has a brave and generous heart. This child will make you very proud.”

The news of a second son created envy in upper-caste homes where marriages had also taken place around the time Dukhi and Roopa were wed, but where the women were still childless or awaiting a male issue. It was hard for them not to be resentful — the birth of daughters often brought them beatings from their husbands and their husbands’ families. Sometimes they were ordered to discreetly get rid of the newborn. Then they had no choice but to strangle the infant with her swaddling clothes, poison her, or let her starve to death.

“What is happening to the world?” they complained. “Why two sons in an untouchable’s house, and not even one in ours?” What could a Chamaar pass on to his sons that the gods should reward him thus? Something was wrong, the Law of Manu had been subverted. Someone in the village had definitely committed an act to offend the deities, surely some special ceremonies were needed to appease the gods and fill these empty vessels with male fruit.

But one of the childless wives had a more down-to-earth theory to explain their unborn sons. It could be, she said, that these two boys were not really Dukhi’s. Perhaps the Chamaar had journeyed afar and kidnapped a Brahmin’s newborns — this would explain everything.

When the rumours started to spread, Dukhi feared for his family’s safety. As a precaution, he went out of his way to be obsequious. Every time he saw high-caste persons on the road, he prostrated abjectly, but at a safe distance — so he couldn’t be accused of contaminating them with his shadow. His moustache was shaved off even though its length and shape had conformed to caste rules, its tips humbly drooping downwards unlike proud upper-caste moustaches that flourished skywards. He dressed himself and the children in the filthiest rags he could find among their meagre possessions. To avoid charges of pollution, he told Roopa not to appear anywhere in the vicinity of the village well; her friend Padma fetched their drinking water. Whatever task Dukhi was ordered to do, he did without questioning, without thought of payment, keeping his eyes averted from the high-caste face and fixed safely on the feet. He knew that the least annoyance someone felt towards him could be fanned into flames to devour his family.

Fortunately, the majority of the upper castes were content to wax philosophic about the problem of fallow wombs and leave it at that. They said it was obvious the world was passing through Kaliyug, through the Age of Darkness, and sonless wives were not the only aberration in the cosmic order. “Witness the recent drought,” they said. “A drought that came even though we performed all the correct pujas. And when the rains fell, they fell in savage torrents; remember the floods, the huts that were washed away. And what about the two-headed calf in the neighbouring district?”

No one in the village had seen the two-headed calf, for the distance was great, and it was not possible to make the journey and return by nightfall to the safety of their huts. But they had all heard about the monstrous birth. “Yes, yes,” they agreed. “The Pandits are absolutely correct. It is Kaliyug that is the cause of our troubles.”

The remedy, the Pandits advised, was to be more vigilant in the observance of the dharmic order. There was a proper place for everyone in the world, and as long as each one minded his place, they would endure and emerge unharmed through the Darkness of Kaliyug. But if there were transgressions — if the order was polluted — then there was no telling what calamities might befall the universe.

After this consensus was reached, the village saw a sharp increase in the number of floggings meted out to members of the untouchable castes, as the Thakurs and Pandits tried to whip the world into shape. The crimes were varied and imaginative: a Bhunghi had dared to let his unclean eyes meet Brahmin eyes; a Chamaar had walked on the wrong side of the temple road and defiled it; another had strayed near a puja that was in progress and allowed his undeserving ears to overhear the sacred shlokas; a Bhunghi child had not erased her footprints cleanly from the dust in a Thakur’s courtyard after finishing her duties there — her plea that her broom was worn thin was unacceptable.

Dukhi contributed some of his skin, too, in wrestling the universe out of the clutches of Darkness. He was summoned to graze a herd of goats. The owner was going to be away from the village during the day. “Watch them carefully,” said the man, “especially that one with the broken horn and long beard. He is a real devil.” A glass of goat’s milk was promised in return for the work.

Dukhi spent the morning minding the herd, dreaming about the pleasure Ishvar and Narayan would get from the milk. But as the day wore on and the afternoon grew hot, he fell asleep. The scrabbling animals strayed onto a neighbour’s property. When the owner returned in the evening, instead of a glass of goat’s milk, Dukhi got a thrashing.

It was a small price to pay, he felt, considering what the consequence might have been had it taken the man’s fancy. That night, Roopa crept out to steal butter to apply to the welts raised on her husband’s back and shoulders.

Butter was something Roopa could steal without a second thought. In fact, she did not even consider it stealing. After all, hadn’t Lord Krishna himself made a full-time job of it during his adolescence, aeons ago, in Mathura?

At the appropriate age, Dukhi began teaching his sons the skills of the trade to which they were born shackled. Ishvar was seven when he was taken to his first dead animal. Narayan wanted to go as well, but Dukhi said it was not time for him, he was still too young. He promised the child that he would be allowed to help with tasks like salting the skin, scraping off hair and bits of rotten flesh with a dull knife, and collecting the fruit of the myrobalan tree to tan the hide. This cheered Narayan up.

Dukhi and Ishvar arrived with a few other Chamaars at Thakur Premji’s farm, and were taken to the field where the buffalo lay. An egret was perched on the dark mound, picking insects from the skin. It flew off when the men approached. Clouds of flies buzzed over the animal.

“Is it dead?” asked Dukhi.

“Of course it’s dead,” said the Thakur’s man. “You think we can afford to give away live cattle?” Shaking his head and muttering about the stupidity of these achhoot jatis, he left them to their work.

Dukhi and his friends positioned their cart behind the buffalo; a wooden plank was sloped from the cartbed to the animal. They grabbed its legs and began inching its hulk up the plank, keeping the wood wet so the weight might slide a little more readily.

“Look!” said one of them. “It’s alive, it’s breathing!”

“Aray Chhotu, not so loud,” said Dukhi. “Or they won’t let us take it. Anyway, it’s almost dead — a few more hours at best.”

They resumed the task, sweating and grunting, while Chhotu cursed the Thakur softly. “Bastard hypocrite. Making us break our backs. Would be so much easier to kill it, skin the carcass right here, chop it into small hunks.”

“That’s true,” said Dukhi. “But how can Mr. High-Caste Shit permit that? The purity of his land would be spoilt.”

“The only thing high caste about him is his little meat-eating lund,” said Chhotu. “It feeds on his wife’s high-caste choot every night.”

The men chuckled, then renewed their efforts. Someone said, “He has been seen in the town once a week. Gobbling chicken, mutton, beef, whatever he likes.”

“They are all like that,” said Dukhi. “Vegetarian in public, meat-eaters in private. Come on, push!”

Ishvar paid close attention to the men’s conversation, joining in the effort with his little hands, as the men encouraged him. “Now we will succeed! Push, Ishvar, push! Harder, harder!”

Amid the joking and cursing and teasing, the buffalo suddenly came alive, raising its head one last time before expiring. The adults shouted in surprise and jumped back to avoid the horns. But the tip caught Ishvar’s left cheek, stunning him. He collapsed.

Dukhi grabbed the boy in his arms and began running to his hut. His legs swallowed the distance in urgent gulps. The stunted noonday shadow of their joined figures clung faithfully to his heels. Sweat poured from his brow, sprinkling his son’s face. Ishvar stirred then, and his tongue emerged and tasted his father’s salt at his lips. Dukhi breathed easier, heartened by the sign of life.

“Hai Bhagwan!” screamed Roopa when she saw her bleeding son. “Aray father-of-Ishvar, what did you do to my child! What-all was the big rush to take him today? Such a little boy! You couldn’t wait till he was older?”

“He is seven,” Dukhi answered quietly. “My father took me at five.”

“That’s a reason? And if you were injured and killed at five, you would do the same to your son?”

“If I were killed at five, I wouldn’t have a son,” said Dukhi, even more quietly. He went out to collect the leaves that would heal the wound, and chopped them very fine, till they were almost a paste. Then he returned to work.

Roopa bathed the gash and wrapped the dark-green ointment over it. Afterwards, when she was calmer, her fury at Dukhi subsided. She tied protective amulets to her children’s arms, reasoning that it was the evil eye of the Brahmin women that had hurt Ishvar.

And the childless women were also reassured: the universe was returning to normal; the untouchable boy was no longer fair of face but disfigured, which was as it should be.

Dukhi came home in the evening and lowered himself to the floor in the corner which was his eating place. Ishvar and Narayan snuggled close to him, enjoying the smell of the beedi smoke that clung to his breath, temporarily diluting the stench of hides and tannin and offal. The fragrance of the baking dough made them hungry, as Roopa rolled out fresh chapatis.

The wound festered for a few days before starting to heal, and soon there was no cause for worry. The injury, however, left that part of Ishvar’s face forever frozen. His father said, trying to make light of it, “God wants my son to cry only half as much as other mortals.”

He preferred to overlook the fact that Ishvar’s smile, too, could only be smiled with half his face.

The year that Ishvar turned ten and Narayan eight, the rainfall was excellent. Dukhi struggled through the monsoon months, scrounging armfuls of thatch to keep the hut from leaking. The fields recovered from the drought and the cattle grew healthy. Dukhi waited in vain for animals to die and yield their hides.

As the fine weather continued, promising a bountiful crop for the zamindars, for the landless untouchables it was a bleak season. There would be work for them when the harvest was ready, but till then they had to depend on charity or the paltry scraps of toil thrown their way at the discretion of the landlords.

After several idle days, Dukhi was grateful to be sent for by Thakur Premji. He was led to the back of the house where a sack of dry red chillies was waiting to be ground into powder. “Can you finish that by sunset?” asked Thakur Premji. “Or maybe I should call two men.”

Reluctant to share whatever slim reward was to come his way, Dukhi said, “Don’t worry, Thakurji, it will all be done before the sun disappears.” He filled the massive stone mortar with chillies and selected one of the three long, heavy pestles lying by it. He began pounding vigorously, smiling frequently at the Thakur who stayed to watch for a while.

Dukhi slowed down after he left. The rapid rhythm could only be maintained when there were three people at the mortar, delivering the pestles in succession. By lunchtime he had finished half the sack, and stopped to eat. Looking around to see if anyone was watching, he reached into the mortar and sprinkled a pinch of chilli powder on his chapati. He was just in time, for the Thakur sent his man out with a can of water.

It was late in the afternoon, when the sack was almost empty, that the accident occurred. Without warning, as the pestle landed and rebounded the way it had been doing all day, the mortar split cleanly in two and collapsed. One side landed on Dukhi’s left foot and crushed it.

The Thakur’s wife was watching from the kitchen window. “Oiee, my husband! Come quick!” she screamed. “The Chamaar donkey has destroyed our mortar!”

Her screams roused Thakur Premji, drowsing under the awning at the front of the house, cradling a grandchild in his arms. He passed the sleeping infant to a servant and ran to the back. Dukhi was sprawled on the ground, trying to bandage his bleeding foot with the cloth he normally wrapped around his head like a brief turban.

“What have you done, you witless animal! Is this what I hired you for?”

Dukhi looked up. “Forgive me, Thakurji, I did not do anything to it. There must have been a flaw in the stone.”

“Liar!” He raised his stick threateningly. “First breaking it, then lying to me on top! If you did nothing, how can it break? A big thing of solid stone! Is it made of glass to shatter just like that?”

“I swear on the heads of my children,” begged Dukhi, “I was only pounding chillies, as I have done all day. Look, Thakurji, the sack is almost empty, the work — ”

“Get up! Leave my land at once! I never want to see you again!”

“But Thakurji, the work — ”

He hit Dukhi across the back with his stick. “Get up, I said! And get out!”

Dukhi rose to his feet, limping backwards, out of reach. “Thakurji, have pity, there has been no work for days, I don’t — ”

The Thakur lashed out wildly. “Listen, you stinking dog! You have destroyed my property, yet I am letting you off! If I wasn’t such a softhearted fool, I would hand you to the police for your crime. Now get out!” He continued to swing the stick.

Dukhi dodged, but could not move quickly enough with his injured foot. Several blows found their mark before he had slipped through the gate. He hobbled home, cursing the Thakur and his progeny.

“Leave me alone,” he hissed in response to Roopa’s fearful inquiries. When she persisted, clinging to his side, begging to be allowed to examine his damaged foot, he struck her. Angry and humiliated, he sat silent in the hut all evening. Ishvar and Narayan were frightened; they had never seen their father like this.

Afterwards, he let Roopa clean and bandage the wound, and ate the food she brought him, but still he refused to talk. “You will feel better if you tell me,” she said.

Two days later he told her, his bitterness overflowing like the foul ooze from his foot. He had not minded when he had been beaten that time for the straying goats. It had been his fault, he had fallen asleep. But this time he had done nothing wrong. He had worked hard all day, yet he had been thrashed and cheated of his payment. “On top of that, my foot is crushed,” he said. “I could kill that Thakur. Nothing but a lowly thief. And they are all like that. They treat us like animals. Always have, from the days of our forefathers.”

“Shh,” she said. “It’s not good for the boys to hear such things. It was just bad luck, the mortar breaking, that’s all.”

“I spit in their upper-caste faces. I don’t need their miserable jobs from now on.”

After his foot had healed, Dukhi turned his back on the village. He left at dawn and arrived in town before noon, getting rides in bullock carts and a lorry. He selected a street corner where there were no other cobblers nearby. With his metal last, awl, hammer, nails, cleats, and leather patches arranged in a semicircle around him, he settled upon the pavement and waited to mend the footwear of town dwellers.

Shoes, moccasins, slippers tramped past in a variety of designs and colours which intrigued and worried him. If one of them chose to stop, would he be capable of doing the repairs? It all seemed more complicated than the simple sandals he was used to.

After a while someone halted before Dukhi, shook the chappal off his right foot, and pointed at its broken cross straps with his big toe. “How much for fixing that?”

Dukhi picked it up and turned it over. “Two annas.”

“Two annas? Are you paagal or something? I might as well buy new chappals if I am going to pay a mochi like you two annas.”

“Aray sahab, who will give you new chappals for two annas?” They haggled for a bit, then settled for one anna. Dukhi scraped the soles to expose the groove in which the broken stitches sat. The grime flaked off in large flat crusts. He decided there was no difference between village grime and town grime, it looked and smelled the same.

He inserted the straps in their slits and secured them with a row of new stitches. Before trying on the chappal, the man tugged at the repair work. He took trial steps, wiggled his toes around, grunted his approval and paid.

Six hours and five customers later, it was time to start back. Dukhi made a few purchases with the money — a little flour, three onions, four potatoes, two hot green chillies — then took the homeward road. Traffic was sparser than in the morning. He walked a long time before getting a ride. It was night when he reached the village. Roopa and the children were waiting anxiously for him.

After a few days at the street corner, Dukhi saw striding towards him on the pavement his friend Ashraf. “I didn’t know you were cobbling in my neighbourhood,” said Ashraf, surprised to see him.

Ashraf was the Muslim tailor in town. He was Dukhi’s age, and it was to him that Dukhi used to go on the rare occasions when he could afford to get something for Roopa or the children — the Hindu tailor did not sew for untouchables.

Learning about Dukhi’s misfortunes in the village, Ashraf asked, “Would you like to try something different? Something which might pay more?”

“Where?”

“Come with me.”

He gathered up his implements and hurried away with Ashraf. They walked to the other side of town, across the railway line, to the lumberyard. There, Dukhi was introduced to Ashraf’s uncle, who managed the place.

From now on, there was always work for him at the yard: loading and unloading lorries, or helping to make deliveries. Dukhi greatly preferred the labour of lifting and carrying, walking upright among men, instead of crouching all day on the pavement, conducting conversations with strangers’ feet. And the fragrance of fresh wood was a welcome respite from the stench of filthy footwear.

One morning, on his way to the lumberyard, Dukhi saw a lot of traffic. The bullock cart he rode in was swallowed by clouds of dust. It had to often pull over to the side, and once, when a large bus passed, ended almost in the ditch.

“What is happening?” he asked the cart-driver. “Where are they all going?” The man shrugged, concentrating on getting his bullock back on the road. His prod failed to get results, and the two men had to jump off and help the animal.

On arriving in town, Dukhi saw the streets festooned with banners and flags. He learned that some leaders of the Indian National Congress were visiting. He wandered over to Ashraf’s shop to tell him, and they decided to join the crowds.

The leaders started their speeches; they said they had come to spread the Mahatma’s message regarding the freedom struggle, the struggle for justice. “We have been slaves in our own country for too long. And the time has come to fight for liberty. In this fight, we do not need guns or swords. We do not need harsh words or hatred. With truth and ahimsa we will convince the British that the moment is right for them to depart.”

The crowd applauded; the speaker continued. “You will agree that in order to overthrow the yoke of slavery we have to be strong. No one can argue against that. And only the genuinely strong can employ the power of truth and non-violence. But how can we even start to be strong when there is a disease in our midst? First we must be rid of this disease that plagues the body of our motherland.

“What is this disease? you may ask. This disease, brothers and sisters, is the notion of untouchability, ravaging us for centuries, denying dignity to our fellow human beings. This disease must be purged from our society, from our hearts, and from our minds. No one is untouchable, for we are all children of the same God. Remember what Gandhiji says, that untouchability poisons Hinduism as a drop of arsenic poisons milk.”

After this, other speakers addressed the crowd about matters related to the freedom struggle, about those who were spending time honourably in jail for civil disobedience, for refusing to observe unjust laws. Dukhi and Ashraf stayed till the very end, when the leaders requested the crowd to pledge that they would expunge all caste prejudice from their thoughts, words, and deeds. “We are taking this message across the nation, and asking people everywhere to unite and fight this ungodly system of bigotry and evil.”

The crowd took the oath that had been enjoined on them by the Mahatma, echoing the words with enthusiasm. The rally was over.

“I wonder,” said Dukhi to Ashraf, “if the zamindars in our villages would ever clap for a speech about getting rid of the caste system.”

“They would clap, and go on in the same old way,” said Ashraf. “The devil has stolen their sense of justice, nah — they cannot see or feel. But you should leave your village, bring your family here.”

“And where would we stay? There, at least we have a hut. Besides, that’s where my ancestors have always lived. How can I leave that earth? It’s not good to go far from your native village. Then you forget who you are.”

“That’s true,” said Ashraf. “But at least send your sons here for a short time. To learn a trade.”

“They would not be allowed to practise it in the village.”

Ashraf was impatient with his pessimism. “Things will change, nah. You heard those men at the meeting. Send your sons to me, I will teach them tailoring in my shop.”

For a moment, Dukhi’s eyes lit up, imagining the promise of the future. “No,” he said. “Better to stay where we belong.”

The harvest was ready, and Dukhi stopped going to the lumberyard. His vow to shun the landlords had weakened, for the distance to town was long when the transport was unreliable. He left for the fields before dawn to bring in the crop, returning to his family after dusk with an aching back and all the news from surrounding villages that he had missed in the last few months.

The news was of the same type that Dukhi had heard evening after evening during his childhood; only the names were different. For walking on the upper-caste side of the street, Sita was stoned, though not to death — the stones had ceased at first blood. Gambhir was less fortunate; he had molten lead poured into his ears because he ventured within hearing range of the temple while prayers were in progress. Dayaram, reneging on an agreement to plough a landlord’s field, had been forced to eat the landlord’s excrement in the village square. Dhiraj tried to negotiate in advance with Pandit Ghanshyam the wages for chopping wood, instead of settling for the few sticks he could expect at the end of the day; the Pandit got upset, accused Dhiraj of poisoning his cows, and had him hanged.

While Dukhi toiled in the fields and leather-work remained scarce, there was no work for his sons. Roopa tried to keep Ishvar and Narayan busy by sending them to search for firewood. Occasionally, they also found stray, unclaimed cowpats overlooked by the cowherds, though this was rare, for the precious commodity was zealously collected by the cows’ owners. Roopa did not use the dung for fuel, preferring to daub it level at the entrance to the hut. After it dried, hard and smooth, she enjoyed for a while a threshold as firm as terracotta, like the courtyards of the cattle-keepers.

Despite their chores, the boys had many empty hours to run around by the river or chase wild rabbits. They knew exactly what their caste permitted or prohibited; instinct, and eavesdropping on the conversation of elders, had demarcated the borders in their consciousness as clearly as stone walls. Still, their mother worried that they would get into trouble. She waited anxiously for the threshing and winnowing to finish, when they would be occupied under her eye, sifting the chaff for stray grain.

Sometimes the brothers spent the morning near the village school. They listened to the upper-caste children recite the alphabet, and sing little songs about colours, numbers, the monsoon. The shrill voices flew out the window like flocks of sparrows. Later, in secret among the trees by the river, the two would try to repeat from memory what the children had sung.

If curiosity drew Ishvar and Narayan too close and the teacher spotted them, they were immediately chased away. “Shameless little donkeys! Off with you or I’ll break your bones!” But Ishvar and Narayan were quite skilled at spying on the class; they could creep near enough to hear chalks squeaking on slates.

The chalks and slates fascinated them. They yearned to hold the white sticks in their hands, make little white squiggles like the other children, draw pictures of huts, cows, goats, and flowers. It was like magic, to make things appear out of nowhere.

One morning, when Ishvar and Narayan were hidden behind the bushes, the students were brought into the front yard to practise a dance for the harvest festival. The sky was cloudless, and snatches of song could be heard from the fields in the distance. The labourers’ melodies contained the agony of their aching backs, of their skin sizzling under the sun. Ishvar and Narayan listened for their father’s voice, but could not separate the strands in the chorus.

The schoolchildren held hands and formed two concentric rings, barefoot, moving in opposite directions. Every now and then, the rings reversed the pattern of movement. This was cause for much mirth because some children were late in turning, and there were mixups and tangles.

After watching for a while, Ishvar and Narayan suddenly realized that the schoolhouse was empty. They went around the yard on all fours till they were behind the hut, and entered through a window.

In one corner, the children’s footwear was arranged in neat rows; in another, beside the blackboard, were their lunchboxes. Food odours mingled with chalk dust. The boys headed for the cupboard where the slates and chalks were kept. Grabbing one each, they sat cross-legged on the floor with the slates in their laps, as they had so often watched the children do. But the two were uncertain about what came next. Narayan waited for his older brother to begin.

Ishvar was a little nervous, his chalk poised above the slate, fearful of what might happen. Gingerly he made contact, and drew a line, then another, and another. He grinned at Narayan — how easy it was to make his mark!

Now Narayan, his fingers shaking with excitement, chalked a short white line and displayed it proudly. They grew more adventurous, departing from straight lines, covering the slates with loops and curves and scrawls of all shapes and sizes, stopping only to admire, marvelling at the ease with which they could create, then erase with a sweep of the hand and recreate at will. And the chalk dust on their palms and fingers set them to giggling too — it could make thick funny lines on the forehead just like the caste marks of the Brahmins.

They returned to the cupboard to examine the rest of its contents, unrolling alphabet charts and opening picture books. Lost in the forbidden world, they did not notice that the dancing in the yard had ended, nor did they hear the teacher sneak up behind. He grabbed them by their ears and dragged them outside.

“You Chamaar rascals! Very brave you are getting, daring to enter the school!” He twisted their ears till they yelped with pain and started to cry. The schoolchildren fearfully huddled together.

“Is this what your parents teach you? To defile the tools of learning and knowledge? Answer me! Is it?” He released their ears long enough to deliver stinging blows to the head, then seized them again.

Sobbing, Ishvar said, “No, masterji, it isn’t.”

“Then why were you in there?”

“We only wanted to look — ”

“Wanted to look! Well, I will show you now! I will show you the back of my hand!” Holding on to Narayan, he slapped Ishvar six times in quick succession across the face, then delivered the same number to his brother’s face. “And what is this on your foreheads, you shameless creatures? Such blasphemy!” He slapped them again, and by now his hand was sore.

“Get the cane from the cupboard,” he ordered a girl. “And you two remove your pants. After I am through, not one of you achhoot boys will ever dream of fooling with things you are not supposed to touch.”

The cane was presented, and the teacher asked four older students to hold the trespassers to the ground, face down, by their hands and ankles. He commenced the punishment, alternating strokes between the two. The watching children flinched each time the cane landed on the bare bottoms. A little boy started to cry.

When the two had received a dozen strokes each, the teacher stopped. “That should teach you,” he panted. “Now get out, and don’t let your unclean faces be seen here ever again.”

Ishvar and Narayan ran off with their pants straggling, stumbling and tripping comically. The other children grabbed the opportunity to laugh; they were grateful for the relief it provided.

Dukhi did not hear till evening about his sons’ punishment. He grimly told Roopa to delay baking the chapatis. “Why?” she asked, alarmed. “After a whole day in the fields you are not hungry? Where-all are you going?”

“To Pandit Lalluram. He must do something about this.”

“Leave it for now,” she pleaded. “Don’t disturb such an important man at dinnertime.” But Dukhi washed the day’s dust off his hands and went.

Pandit Lalluram was not just any Brahmin, he was a Chit-Pavan Brahmin — descended from the purest among the pure, from the keepers of the Sacred Knowledge. He was neither the village headman nor a government official, but his peers said he commanded their unswerving respect for his age, his sense of fairness, and for the Sacred Knowledge locked inside his large, shiny cranium.

Disputes of any sort, over land or water or animals, were presented before him for arbitration. Family quarrels concerning disobedient daughters-in-law, stubborn wives, and philandering husbands also fell within his jurisdiction. Thanks to his impeccable credentials, everyone always went away satisfied: the victim obtained the illusion of justice; the wrongdoer was free to continue in his old ways; and Pandit Lalluram, for his trouble, received gifts of cloth, grain, fruit, and sweets from both sides.

The learned Pandit also enjoyed a reputation for promoting communal harmony. For instance, during the periodic protests against Muslims and cow slaughter, Pandit Lalluram persuaded his coreligionists that it was not right for Hindus to condemn the cow-eaters. He explained that the Muslim, by his religion, was burdened with four wives, poor fellow, and he needed to eat the flesh of animals to heat up his blood and service those four wives — he was carnivorous out of necessity, not out of fondness for cow flesh or to harass Hindus, and, as such, should be pitied and left in peace to satisfy his religious requirements.

With his spotless record, Pandit Lalluram’s champions were many. So honest and fair was he, they said, even an untouchable could receive justice at his hands. That no untouchable could verify this claim in living memory was beside the point. People seemed to remember, vaguely, the time a landlord had beaten a Bhunghi to death for arriving late at the house, well after sunrise, to cart away the household’s excrement. Pandit Lalluram had ruled — or it might have been his father, or perhaps his grandfather; in any case, someone had ruled — that the offence was serious, but not serious enough to warrant the killing, and that the landlord, in recompense, must provide food, shelter, and clothing for the dead man’s wife and children for the next six years. Or was it for six months, or perhaps six weeks?

Relying on this legendary reputation for justice, Dukhi sat at Pandit Lalluram’s feet and told him about the beating of Ishvar and Narayan. The learned man was resting in an armchair, having just finished his dinner, and belched loudly several times during his visitor’s narration. Dukhi paused politely at each eructation, while Pandit Lalluram murmured “Hai Ram” in thanks for an alimentary tract blessed with such energetic powers of digestion.

“How much he slapped my sons — you should see their swollen faces, Panditji,” said Dukhi. “And their backsides look like an angry tiger raked them with his claws.”

“Poor children,” sympathized Pandit Lalluram. He rose and went to a shelf inside. “Here, put this ointment on their backs. It will soothe the burning pain.”

Dukhi bowed his head. “Thank you, Panditji, you are truly kind.” He removed the cloth from his head and wrapped the small flat tin in it. “Panditji, some time ago I was hammered badly by Thakur Premji for no fault of mine. But I did not come to you. I did not want to trouble you.”

Pandit Lalluram raised his eyebrows and rubbed his big toe. Nodding, he kneaded sweat and dirt into black bits that rolled off his fingers.

“That time I suffered silently,” said Dukhi. “But for my children, I have come to you. They should not have to suffer unjust beatings.”

Still silent, Pandit Lalluram sniffed the fingers which had finished massaging his big toe. He pivoted on one buttock and broke wind. Dukhi leaned back to allow it free passage, wondering what penalty might adhere to the offence of interfering with the waft of brahminical flatus.

“They are only children,” he pleaded, “and they were doing no harm.” He waited for a response. “They were doing no harm, Panditji,” he repeated, wanting the learned man to at least agree with him. “That teacher should be punished for what he has done.”

Pandit Lalluram sighed long and hard. He leaned sideways and blew a thick stream of mucus out of his nose on to the dry earth. The impact of its landing raised a tiny puff of dust. He rubbed his nose and sighed again. “Dukhi Mochi, you are a good, hardworking man. I have known you for a long time. You always try to do your duty, don’t you, according to your caste?”

Dukhi nodded.

“Which is wise,” approved Pandit Lalluram, “for it is the path to happiness. Otherwise, there would be chaos in the universe. You understand there are four varnas in society: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra. Each of us belongs to one of these four varnas, and they cannot mix. Correct?”

Dukhi nodded again, hiding his impatience. He had not come to hear a lecture on the caste system.

“Now just as you, a leather-worker, have to do your dharmic duty towards your family and society, the teacher must do his. You would not deny that, would you, Dukhi?”

Dukhi shook his head.

“Punishing your sons for their misdeeds was part of the teacher’s duty. He had no choice. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Panditji, punishment is sometimes necessary. But such a terrible beating?”

“It was a terrible offence that they-”

“But they are only children, and curious, like all — ”

Pandit Lalluram rolled his eyes at the interruption, pointing heavenward with the index finger of his right hand to silence Dukhi. “How can I make you understand? You do not have the knowledge that would help you to appreciate these matters.” Now the note of patient suffering in his voice was replaced by something harsher. “Your children entered the classroom. They polluted the place. They touched instruments of learning. They defiled slates and chalks, which upper-caste children would touch. You are lucky there wasn’t a holy book like the Bhagavad Gita in that cupboard, no sacred texts. Or the punishment would have been more final.”

Dukhi was calm as he touched Pandit Lalluram’s sandals to take his leave. “I understand completely, Panditji, thank you for explaining to me. I am so lucky — you, a Chit-Pavan Brahmin, wasting precious time on an ignorant Chamaar like me.”

Pandit Lalluram absently lifted his hand in farewell. There was a small doubt in his mind as to whether he had been flattered or insulted. Presently, though, another vigorous belch came rumbling upwards, displacing the doubt and putting both mind and belly at ease.

On the way home, Dukhi came across his friends who were still smoking under the tree by the river. “Oyeh, Dukhi, out so late in that part of the village?”

“Went to see that Chit-Pavan Brahmin,” said Dukhi, and narrated his visit in detail. “Goo-Khavan Brahmin is what he should be called instead.”

They laughed with delight, and Chhotu agreed that Shit-Eating Brahmin was indeed a more suitable name. “But how does he have the appetite, after gobbling a pound of ghee and two pounds of sweets at every meal?”

“He gave me this ointment for the children,” said Dukhi. They passed the tin around, examining, sniffing the contents.

“Looks like boot polish to me,” said Chhotu. “He must apply it to his head every morning. That’s why it shines like the sun.”

“Aray bhaiya, you are confusing his head with his arse-hole. That’s where he applies the polish — that’s where the sun shines from, according to his caste brothers. That’s why the shit-eaters all try to lick their way into it.”

“I have a shlokha of advice for all of them,” said Dayaram, and recited in mock Sanskrit, imitating the exalted cadences of a pujari reading scriptures: “Goluma Ekdama Tajidevum! Chuptum Makkama Jhaptum!”

The men roared at the references to buggery and copulation. Dukhi threw the tin in the river. Leaving his friends to speculate about what exactly, if anything, lay below the rolls of fat that constituted Pandit Lalluram’s belly, he went home.

He told Roopa he would be leaving early next morning for town. “My mind is made up. I am going to talk to Ashraf the tailor.”

She did not ask why. Her mind was busy planning the strategy for another nocturnal assault on someone’s butter-churn, this time for her children’s backsides.

Ashraf wanted no payment to apprentice Dukhi’s sons. “They will be a help to me,” he said. “And how much food can two little boys eat? Whatever we cook, they will share with us. That’s all right, nah? No restrictions?”

“No restrictions,” said Dukhi.

Two weeks later he returned to the tailor’s shop with Ishvar and Narayan. “Ashraf is like my brother,” he explained to the children. “So you must always call him Ashraf Chacha.”

The tailor beamed with pleasure, honoured by the title of uncle, as Dukhi continued, “You will stay with Ashraf Chacha for some time, and learn with him. Listen carefully to everything he says, and treat him with the same respect you have for me.”

The boys had been prepared for the separation in advance by their father. This was only the formal announcement. “Yes, Bapa,” they answered.

“Ashraf Chacha is going to turn you into tailors like himself. From now on, you are not cobblers — if someone asks your name, don’t say Ishvar Mochi or Narayan Mochi. From now on you are Ishvar Darji and Narayan Darji.”

Then Dukhi gave them each a pat on the back, and a slight push, as though to propel them into the other maris keeping. They left their father’s side and stepped towards the tailor, who put out his hands to receive them.

Dukhi watched Ashraf’s fingers, the warmth with which he gripped the children’s shoulders. Ashraf was a good and gentle man, he knew his sons would be well-cared for. All the same, an icy ache was spreading around his heart.

During the journey back to the village, he slumped in the bullock cart, feeling exhausted, barely aware of the wheels jouncing over ruts and bumps, jarring his bones. Simultaneously, he felt crazy surges of energy that made him want to hop out of the cart and run. He knew he had done the best thing possible for his sons, and a weight had lifted. Why, then, did he not feel lighter? What was this other thing pressing down on him?

Late in the afternoon he jumped off the bullock cart by the village road. Roopa was sitting idle in the hut, staring out the entrance, when his shadow appeared in the doorway. He told her everything was settled.

She looked at him accusingly. He had made a hole in her life that nothing could fill. Each time she thought of her two sons — distanced by miles to live with a stranger, and a Muslim at that — then her grief leapt up into her throat, and she felt she would choke, she told her husband. He observed bitterly that at least his Muslim friend treated him better than his Hindu brothers.

Muzaffar Tailoring Company was located on a street of small family businesses. There was a hardware store, coal-merchant, banya, and miller, all in a row, the shops identical in shape and size, distinguished solely by the interior noises and smells. Muzaffar Tailoring Company was the only one that displayed a signboard.

Ashraf’s shop was cramped, as were the living quarters over it: one room and kitchen. He had married last year, and had a month-old daughter. His wife, Mumtaz, was less pleased than he to have two more mouths staying with them. It was decided that the apprentices would sleep in the shop.

Ishvar and Narayan were overwhelmed by the sudden change in their lives. Buildings, electric lights, water that flowed from taps — everything so different from the village, and so amazing. On the first day they sat in awe on the stone steps outside the shop, watching the street and seeing a universe of frightening chaos. Gradually, they perceived the river of traffic in the street and, within it, the currents of handcarts, bicycles, bullock carts, buses, and the occasional lorry. Now they learned the wild river’s character. They were reassured that it was not all madness and noise, there was a pattern in things.

They observed people come to the banya to purchase salt, spices, coconut, pulses, candles, oil. They saw grain being taken to the miller to be made into flour. The miller’s arms slowly became white while he worked; sometimes, his face and eyelashes too. The coal-merchant’s arms and face turned black as the hours progressed; his delivery boys ran back and forth all day with baskets of coal. Ishvar and Narayan loved to watch their neighbours when they washed at night, emerging brown from behind their daytime colours.

Ashraf left them alone for two days, till their curiosity turned of its own accord towards the tailoring shop. The centre of their desire was, of course, the sewing-machine. To satisfy them, he let each take a turn at working the treadle while he guided a scrap under the needle. The brothers were thrilled that they could make the machine perform. It was as inspiring as making their mark with chalk upon slate.

Now they were ready to settle down to less exciting things, like threading a needle and hand-stitching. Eager to learn, they impressed Ashraf with their quickness. The next time a customer came to Muzaffar Tailoring Company, he decided to let Ishvar write down the measurements.

The man carried striped material for a shirt. Ashraf opened the order book to a new page, noted the customer’s name, then unrolled his measuring tape with a flourish, which the boys simply adored. They had already begun to practise it in private, to Ashraf’s amusement.

“Collar, fourteen and half inches,” he dictated. “Chest, thirty-two.” He glanced at Ishvar, who was bent over the book, his tongue sticking out in grave concentration. Turning to the customer, Ashraf continued, “Sleeves. Short or long?”

“Has to be long,” said the man. “I am wearing it to a friend’s wedding.” The formalities completed, the customer left, assured that his shirt would be ready in time for the wedding next week.

“Now let’s see the measurements,” said Ashraf.

Smiling proudly, Ishvar handed him the book. The page was covered with black scratches and squiggles.

“Ah, yes, I see.” Ashraf controlled his dismay, patting the boy’s back. “Yes, very good.” He quickly jotted down what he could remember of the figures.

After dinner, he began teaching them the alphabet and numbers. Mumtaz was not pleased. “Now you are becoming their schoolmaster as well. What next? Will you find wives for them also, when they are old enough?”

Next day he finished the wedding-guest’s shirt. The man came for it at the end of the week and tried it on. Ashraf had got everything right except the length: it hung closer to the knees than was desirable. The man looked in the mirror, dubious, turning left and right.

“Absolutely perfect,” admired Ashraf. “This northern Pathani style has become very fashionable these days.” The man left, still a bit uncertain, and the three burst out laughing.

A month after the apprentices had started, Ashraf was wakened in the night by a soft mewling. He sat up to listen, but there was nothing more. He lay down and began to drift.

A few minutes later the sound nudged his sleep again. “What is it?” asked Mumtaz. “Why do you keep waking?”

“A noise. Was the baby crying?”

“No, but she will if you keep jumping up.”

Then the soft sobs came again. “It’s downstairs.” He got out of bed and lit the lamp.

“So why do you have to go? Are you their father?”

Her reproaches followed him as he descended the steps into the shop. He entered and held up the lamp. The light caught Narayan’s tear-glistened cheeks. Ashraf knelt on the floor beside him, gently rubbing his back.

“What’s wrong, Narayan?” he asked, although he knew the answer, having expected an attack of homesickness sooner or later. “I heard you crying. Is something hurting?”

The boy shook his head. Ashraf put his arm around him. “When your father is not here, I stand in his place. And Mumtaz Chachi is like your mother, nah? You can tell us anything you like.”

Narayan burst into sobs at that. Now Ishvar awoke as well and rubbed his eyes, shielding them from the lamp.

“Do you know why your brother is crying?” asked Ashraf.

Ishvar nodded gravely. “He thinks of home every night. I also think of it, but I don’t cry.”

“You are a brave boy.”

“I don’t want to cry either,” said Narayan. “But when it gets dark and everybody is sleeping, my father and mother come in my mind.” He sniffed and wiped his eyes. “I see our hut, and it makes me very sad, and then it makes me cry.”

Ashraf held him on his lap, saying it was all right to think of his parents. “But don’t be sad, your Bapa will arrive in a few weeks to take you home for a visit. And when you have learned all the tailoring, you will open your own shop and earn lots of money. How proud your parents will be, nah?”

He told the boys that whenever they felt sad, they could come and tell him about their village, the river, the fields, their friends. Talking together about it would change the sadness to happiness, he assured them. He lay by their side till they fell asleep, then crept upstairs with the lamp turned low.

Mumtaz was sitting in the dark, waiting for him. “Are they all right?” she asked anxiously.

He nodded, reassured by her concern. “They were just feeling lonely.”

“Maybe we should let them sleep upstairs from tomorrow.”

Her offer touched him, and his eyes swam with love. “They are brave boys. They will learn to sleep alone, it’s good for them to become tough,” he said.

It soon became known in Dukhi’s village that his children were learning a trade other than leather-working. In the old days, punishment for stepping outside one’s caste would have been death. Dukhi was spared his life, but it became a very hard life. He was allowed no more carcasses, and had to travel long distances to find work. Sometimes he obtained a hide secretly from fellow Chamaars; it would have been difficult for them if they were found out. The items he fashioned from this illicit leather had to be sold in far-off places where they had not heard about him and his sons.

“Such suffering you have brought upon our heads,” said Roopa almost daily. “No work, no food, no sons. What crimes have I committed to be punished like this? My life has become a permanent shadow.”

But her horizon brightened as the day approached for the children’s visit. She dreamed and made plans, her heartache diverted by the desire to have some treat waiting for them. And if the treat was unaffordable, she determined, then it would be obtained moneylessly, in darkness.

For the first time since the children were born, Dukhi acknowledged that he was aware of her night walks. As she rose stealthily after midnight, he said, “Listen, mother-of-Narayan, I don’t think you should go.”

Roopa jumped. “O, how you scared me! I thought you were asleep!”

“Taking such a risk is stupid.”

“You never said that before.”

“It was different then. It’s not like the boys will starve without butter or a peach or a bit of jaggery.”

Roopa went anyway, promising herself it was the last time. After all, her children had been away for three months, she had to give them something special.

On the long-awaited day, Dukhi left at dawn and brought his sons back for a week. The two boys sat very close to their father, and couldn’t stop touching him throughout the journey, leaning against him on either side, Narayan holding on to his knee, Ishvar clutching his arm. They talked nonstop, then repeated everything for their mother when they got home in the late afternoon.

“The machine is amazing,” said Ishvar. “The big wheel is — ”

“You do your feet likethis-likethis,” said Narayan, flapping his hands to mimic the treadle, “and the needle jumps up and down, it’s so good — ”

“I can do it very fast, but Ashraf Chacha can do it very-very fast.”

“I like the small needle also, with my fingers, it goes in and out of the cloth smoothly, it’s very pointy, once it poked me in my thumb.”

Their mother immediately asked to see the thumb. Assuring herself that there was no permanent damage, she let the story proceed. By dinnertime the boys were exhausted, and started falling asleep over the food. Roopa wiped their hands and mouths, then Dukhi guided them to their mats.

For a long while, they gazed at them sleeping before rolling out their own mats. “They are looking nice and fit,” she said. “See their cheeks.”

“I hope it’s not an unhealthy swelling,” said Dukhi. “Like the swollen bellies that babies get in famine time.”

“What-all rubbish are you talking? With my mother’s instinct I would know at once if my children were not well.” But she understood his doubt was prompted by resentment that their children should grow healthier in a stranger’s house than when they were living at home; she shared his shame. They went to bed feeling a mixture of gladness and sorrow.

The family’s excitement continued the next morning. The boys had brought a tape measure, a blank page, and a pencil from Muzaffar Tailoring, and wanted to measure their parents. Ashraf had taught them a diagrammatic code for the constantly used words like neck, waist, chest, and sleeve.

The boys could not reach high enough, so the two clients had to bend down or sit on the floor for some of the measurements: first their mother, and then their father. While they were recording Dukhi’s sizes, Roopa called her friends from nearby huts to watch. Now Ishvar grew self-conscious and smiled shyly, but Narayan flourished the tape and made his gestures more expansive, enjoying the attention.

Everyone clapped with delight when they finished. In the evening, Dukhi borrowed the piece of paper to show to his friends under the tree by the river. He carried it about with him for the rest of the week.

Then it was time for the boys to return to Muzaffar Tailoring. The parents’ thoughts turned once again with dread towards the absence looming in their lives, in their hut. Ishvar requested his father for the page with the measurements.

“Can’t I keep it?” asked Dukhi. The boys considered their father’s request, then rummaged for a scrap of paper and copied the figures so he could have the original.

Three months again passed before the next visit. This time the boys brought presents for their parents. Ishvar and Narayan planned to fool them that they had gone shopping for the gifts in a big store in town, just like rich townspeople.

“What-all is this?” said Roopa uneasily. “Where did you get the money?”

“We didn’t buy them, Ma! We made them ourselves!” said Narayan, forgetting his little joke. Ishvar explained excitedly how Ashraf Chacha had helped them select and match the remnants left over from the fabric for customers’ orders. Their father’s vest had been easy; there were plenty of white poplin remnants. The choli for their mother had required a bit more planning. A print of red and yellow flowers made up the front of the blouse. The back was a solid red, and the sleeves were fashioned from a swatch of vermilion.

Roopa burst into tears as soon as she put on the choli. Ishvar and Narayan looked at their father in alarm, who said she was crying because she was happy.

“Yes, I am!” she confirmed his verdict through her sobs. She knelt before them and hugged them in turn, and then hugged them together. She saw Dukhi watching, and led the boys to him. “Embrace your father also,” she said, “this is a very special day.”

She left the hut in search of her neighbours. “Padma! Savitri! Come and look! Amba and Pyari, you come too! See what-all my sons have brought!”

Dukhi grinned at the boys. “There will be no dinner today. Her new choli will make Ma forget everything, she will spend the whole day showing off.” He patted his front and sides. “This fits much better than my old one. Material is also nicer.”

“Look, Bapa, there is a pocket as well,” said Narayan.

Roopa and Dukhi wore the new garments all week long. Afterwards, when the boys were back in town, she removed her choli and demanded his vest.

“Why?” he asked.

“To wash.”

But she refused to return it when it was dry. “What if you tear it or something?” She folded both articles, wrapped them in sacking, and secured the parcel with string. She hung it from the roof of the hut, safe from floodwater and rodents.

Ishvar and Narayan’s years of apprenticeship were measured out in three-month intervals, eased somewhat by the week-long visits to their village. They were now eighteen and sixteen, their training was approaching its end, and they would leave Muzaffar Tailoring Company sometime after the monsoon. Ashraf’s family had grown — there were four daughters now: the youngest was three, the oldest, eight. Mumtaz took a keen interest in the apprentices’ plans. The sooner they came to fruition, the more room there would be for her own children, she thought, though she had grown to like the two young men, quiet and always helpful.

Narayan’s preference was to set up in the village and sew for their own people. Ishvar was inclined to stay on in this town or another, become an assistant in someone’s shop. “You cannot earn much in the village,” he said. “Everyone is so poor. There is more scope in a big place.”

Meanwhile, sporadic riots which had started with the talk of independence were spreading as the country’s Partition became a reality. “Maybe it’s better to stay where you are for the time being,” said Ashraf, while Mumtaz glared at him. “The devil is not doing his evil work in our town. You know all the neighbours, you have lived here for many years. And even if your village is peaceful, it’s still the wrong time to start a new business.”

Ishvar and Narayan sent word to their parents with someone passing through that they would remain with Ashraf Chacha till the bad times were over. Roopa was depressed; separated all these long years, and now her sons were further delayed — when would the gods take pity and end her punishment?

Dukhi, too, was disappointed, but accepted the decision as being for the best. Disturbing things were happening around them. Strangers belonging to a Hindu organization that wore white shirts and khaki pants, and trained their members to march about like soldiers, had been visiting the district. They brought with them stories of Muslims attacking Hindus in many parts of the country. “We must get ready to defend ourselves,” they said. “And also to avenge ourselves. If they spill the blood of our Hindu brothers, this country shall run red with rivers of Muslim blood.”

In Dukhi’s village, the Muslims were too few to pose a threat to anyone, but the landlords saw opportunity in the strangers’ warnings. They did their best to galvanize people against the imaginary danger in their midst. “Better to drive out the Mussulman menace before we are burned alive in our huts. For centuries they have invaded us, destroyed our temples, stolen our wealth.”

The men in white shirts and khaki pants persevered for a few more days but had no luck with the vast majority. The lower castes were not impressed by the rhetoric. They had always lived peacefully with their Muslim neighbours. Besides, they were too exhausted keeping body and soul together.

So the attempt to dispossess the village Muslims fizzled out. Leaving behind sinister threats about dealing with traitors, including the chief traitor, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the men from the Hindu organization moved on. Places with larger populations and shops and commerce offered them more opportunities for success, and the cloak of urban anonymity to hide behind, where hoax and hearsay could find fertile ground to grow.

Dukhi and his friends discussed the developments in the evening, by the river. They were confused by the varying accounts that reached them of events in faraway towns and villages.

“The zamindars have always treated us like animals.”

“Worse than animals.”

“But what if it’s true? What if the Mussulman horde sweeps down upon our village, like the khaki pants told us?”

“They have never bothered us before. Why would they do it now? Why should we hurt them because some outsiders come with stories?”

“Yes, it’s strange that suddenly we have all become Hindu brothers.”

“The Muslims have behaved more like our brothers than the bastard Brahmins and Thakurs.”

But the stories kept multiplying: someone had been knifed in the bazaar in town; a sadhu hacked to death at the bus station; a settlement razed to the ground. The tension spread through the entire district. And it was all believable because it resembled exactly what people had been seeing in newspapers for the past few days: reports about arson and riots in large towns and cities; about mayhem and massacre on all sides; about the vast and terrible exchange of populations that had commenced across the new border.

The killings started in the poorer section of town, and began to spread; the next day the bazaar was empty. There were no fruits or vegetables to be bought, the milkmen did not stir, and the only bakery in town, owned by a Muslim, had already been burned to the ground.

“Bread is become rarer than gold,” said Ashraf. “What madness. These people have lived together for generations, laughing and crying together. Now they are butchering one another.” He did no work that day, spending the hours gazing out the door at the deserted street, as though waiting for something dreadful to make its appearance.

“Ashraf Chacha, dinner is ready,” said Narayan, responding to Mumtaz’s signal. Her husband had not eaten all day. She was hoping he would join them now.

“There is something I have to tell you,” he said to Mumtaz. “And you as well,” he turned to Ishvar and Narayan.

“Come, food is ready, later we can talk,” she said. “It is only dal and chapati today, but you must eat a little at least.” She lowered the pot from the stove.

“I am not hungry. You and the little ones eat,” said Ashraf, shepherding the four children towards the food. They were reluctant, having sensed their parents’ anxiety. “Go, boys, you too.”

“I take the trouble to cook and nawab-sahib won’t even touch his fingers to the dinner,” said Mumtaz.

In his present mood, her commonplace complaint assumed vicious overtones. He shouted at her, something he rarely did. “What do you want me to do if I am not hungry? Tie the plate to my belly? Talk sense once in a while, nah!” The youngest two started to cry. One of their elbows overturned a glass of water.

“You must be satisfied now,” said Mumtaz scornfully as she mopped up the spill. “Trying to scare me with your big shouting. Only the little ones are frightened of that, let me tell you.”

Ashraf took the two weeping children in his arms. “Okay, okay, no crying. See, we will all eat together.” He fed them from his plate, putting a morsel in his own mouth when they pointed to it. It soon became a new game, and they cheered up.

Dinner finished quickly, and Mumtaz began taking the pot and ladle outside to the tap for washing. Ashraf stopped her. “I was going to say something before dinner, before your shouting started.”

“I am listening now.”

“It’s about this… about what’s happening everywhere.”

“What?”

“You want me to describe in front of the children?” he whispered fiercely. “Why are you acting stupid? Sooner or later the trouble will come here. No matter what happens, it will never be the same again between the two communities.”

He noticed Ishvar and Narayan listening with dismay, and added in haste, “I don’t mean us, boys. We will always be like one family, even if we are apart.”

“But Ashraf Chacha, we don’t have to be apart,” said Narayan. “Ishvar and I are not planning to leave yet.”

“Yes, I know. But Mumtaz Chachi and the children and I, we have to leave.”

“My poor paagal nawab-sahib — gone completely crazy,” said Mumtaz. “Wants to leave. With four little ones? Where do you want to go?”

“Same place all the others are going. Across the border. What do you want to do? Sit here and wait till the hatred and insanity comes with swords and clubs and kerosene? What I am saying is, tomorrow morning I go to the station and buy our train tickets.”

Mumtaz insisted he was reacting like a foolish old man. But he refused to allow her the temporary comfort of turning her back on danger. He was determined to argue all night, he said, rather than pretend that things were normal.

“I will do whatever is necessary to save my family. How can you be so blind? I will drag you by your hair to the railway station if I have to.” At this threat, the children began crying again.

She dried their tears on her dupatta, and dissolved her opposition to the plan. It was not a case of being blind to danger — the danger could be smelt from miles away, her husband was right. Only, removing the blindfold was difficult because of what she might see.

“It won’t be possible to carry much if we are to leave in a hurry,” she said. “Clothes, a stove, some cooking pots. I’ll start packing now.”

“Yes, keep it ready for tomorrow,” said Ashraf. “The rest we will lock in the shop. Inshallah, someday we will be able to come back and claim it.” He gathered the children for bed. “Come, we must sleep early tonight. Tomorrow we have to start a long journey.”

Narayan found it unbearable to listen to or watch their troubled preparations. He doubted if anything he said would make a difference. Pretending he was going down to the shop, he slipped out the back to their neighbour and told him of the planned flight.

“Is he serious?” said the hardware-store owner. “When we talked this morning, he agreed there was nothing to worry about in our neighbourhood.”

“He has changed his mind.”

“Wait, I will come to him right now.”

He collected the coal-merchant, the banya, and the miller, and knocked on Ashraf’s door. “Forgive us for bothering you at this hour. May we come in?”

“Of course. Will you eat something? A drink?”

“Nothing, thank you. We came because we got some news that is causing us great grief.”

“What is it, what?” Ashraf was agitated, wondering if there had been riot casualties in someone’s family. “Can I help?”

“Yes, you can. You can tell us it’s not true.”

“What’s not true?”

“That you want to leave us, leave the place where you were born and your children were born. This is causing our grief.”

“You are such good people.” Ashraf’s eyes began to moisten. “But I really don’t have a choice, nah.”

“Sit down with us and think calmly,” said the hardware-store owner, putting his arm around Ashraf’s shoulder. “The situation is bad, yes, but it would be madness to attempt to leave.”

The others nodded in agreement. The coal-merchant put his hand on Ashraf’s knee. “Every day trains are crossing that new border, carrying nothing but corpses. My agent arrived yesterday from the north, he has seen it with his own eyes. The trains are stopped at the station and everyone is butchered. On both sides of the border.”

“Then what am I to do?”

The desperation in his voice drew the hardware-store owner’s hand to his shoulder again. “Stay here. You are with friends. We will let nothing happen to your family. Where is there any trouble in our neighbourhood? We have always lived here peacefully.”

“But what will happen when those outside troublemakers come?”

“Yours is the only Muslim shop in the street. You think so many of us together cannot protect one shop?” They hugged him, promising he had nothing to fear. “Any time you want to, day or night, if you feel worried about anything, just come to our house with your wife and children.”

After the neighbours left, Narayan had an idea. “You know the sign outside — Muzaffar Tailoring Company. We could put another one in its place.”

“Why?” asked Ashraf.

Narayan was hesitant to say. “A new one…”

Then Ashraf saw the point. “Yes, with a new name. A Hindu name. It’s a very good idea.”

“Let’s do it right now,” said Ishvar. “I can get a new board from your uncle’s lumberyard. Can I take the cycle?”

“Of course. But be careful, don’t go through a Muslim area.”

An hour later Ishvar returned empty-handed without having reached his destination. “Lots of shops and houses on fire. I kept going — slowly, slowly. Then I saw some people with axes. They were chopping a man. That scared me, I turned back.”

Ashraf sat down weakly. “You were wise. What will we do now?” He was too frightened to think.

“Why do we need a new board?” said Narayan. “We can use the back of this old one. All we need is some paint.”

He went next door again, and the hardware-store owner let him have a blue tin that was open. “It’s a good idea,” he said. “What name are you going to paint?”

“Krishna Tailors, I think,” said Narayan at random.

“The blue will be perfect.” He pointed to the horizon, where smoke and a red glow filled the sky. “I heard it’s the lumberyard. But don’t tell Ashraf now.”

Night had fallen by the time they finished painting the letters and remounting the signboard. “On that old wood the paint looks very new,” said Ashraf.

“I’ll rub a handful of ashes over it,” said Ishvar. “Tomorrow morning, when it’s dry.”

“If we are not all reduced to ashes while we sleep,” said Ashraf softly. The fragile sense of security woven out of his neighbours’ assurances was starting to fray.

In bed, every noise in the darkness was danger approaching to threaten his family, until he was able to identify it as something innocuous. He relearned the familiar sounds to which he had fallen asleep all his life. The thud of the coal-merchant’s charpoy, who liked to sleep in the open, in the back yard (he slammed it down every night to shake out the bedbugs). The crash of the banya’s door being locked for the night; swollen and sticking, it needed a firm hand. The clang of someone’s pail — Ashraf had never found out whose, and what was being done with it at this late hour.

Sometime after midnight, he awoke with a start, went downstairs to the shop and began removing the three framed Koranic quotations that hung on the wall behind the cutting table. Ishvar and Narayan stirred, roused by his fumbling in the dark, and put on the light.

“It’s all right, go to sleep,” he said. “I suddenly remembered these frames.” The wall paint was darker where the frames had hung. Ashraf tried unsuccessfully to wipe away the difference with a damp rag.

“We have something you can put up instead,” said Narayan. He dragged out their trunk from under the cutting table and found three cardboard-stiffened pictures equipped with little string loops for hanging. “Ram and Sita, Krishna, and Laxmi.”

“Yes, definitely,” said Ashraf. “And tomorrow we will burn these Urdu magazines and newspapers.”

At eight-thirty a.m. Ashraf opened the shop as usual, releasing the padlock from the collapsible steel doors on the outside, but without folding them back. The interior wooden door was kept ajar. Like the day before, the street was deserted.

About ten o’clock, the coal-merchant’s son called through the grating. “Father said to ask if you need anything from market, in case it is open. He said it’s better if you don’t go.”

“God bless you, son,” said Mumtaz, “yes, a little milk, if possible, for the children. And any kind of vegetables — a few potatoes or onions, anything you can find.”

The boy returned empty-handed in fifteen minutes; the market was bare. Later, the coal-merchant sent a pitcher of milk from his cow. Mumtaz relied on the dwindling flour and lentils in the house to prepare the day’s meals. Well before dusk, Ashraf padlocked the grating and bolted the doors.

At dinnertime the youngest ones wanted Ashraf to feed them like yesterday. “Ah, you are getting fond of that game,” he smiled.

After the meal, Ishvar and Narayan rose to return downstairs, to let the family prepare for bed. “Stay,” said Ashraf, “it is still early, nah. Without customers, the devil makes the hours move slowly.”

“It should get better from tomorrow,” said Ishvar. “They say the soldiers are soon taking charge.”

“Inshallah,” said Ashraf, watching his youngest play with a rag doll he had made for her. The oldest girl was reading a school book. The other two amused themselves with scraps of cloth, pretending to be dressmakers. He signalled to Ishvar and Narayan to observe their exaggerated actions.

“You used to do that when you were new here,” he said. “And you loved to wave the measure tape, make it snap.” They laughed at the memory, then lapsed into silence again.

The quiet was broken by a hammering at the shop door. Ashraf jumped up, but Ishvar stopped him. “I’ll look,” he said.

From the upstairs window he saw a group of twenty or thirty men on the pavement. They noticed him and shouted, “Open the door! We want to talk to you!”

“Sure, one moment!” he called back. “Listen,” he whispered, “all of you go next door, very quietly, from the upstairs passage. Narayan and I will go down.”

“Ya Allah!” cried Mumtaz softly. “We should have left when we had the chance! You were right, my husband, and I called you foolish, I am the foolish one who did not — ”

“Shut up and come on, quick!” said Ashraf. One of the girls started to sniffle. Mumtaz took the child in her arms and quieted her. Ashraf led them out while Ishvar and Narayan descended to the shop. The banging was furious, directed with hard objects through the grating upon the wooden doors.

“Patience!” shouted Ishvar, “I first have to undo the locks!”

The crowd fell silent when the two figures became visible through the grating. Most of them had some sort of crude weapon, a stick or a spear; others had swords. A few men were wearing saffron shirts, and carried tridents.

The sight of them made Ishvar tremble. For a brief moment he was tempted to tell them the truth and step out of the way. Ashamed of the thought, he unlocked the grating and pushed it open a bit. “Namaskaar, brothers.”

“Who are you?” asked the man in front.

“My father owns Krishna Tailors. This is my brother.”

“And where is your father?”

“Gone to our native place — a relative is sick.”

There was some consultation, then the leader said, “We have information that this is a Muslim shop.”

“What?” said Ishvar and Narayan in unison. “This has been our father’s shop for twenty years!”

From the back of the crowd came complaints. No need for so much talk! Burn it! We know it’s a Muslim shop! Burn it! And those who lie to protect it — burn them, too!

“Is it possible that Muslims work in this shop?” asked the leader.

“Business is not good enough to hire anyone,” said Ishvar. “Barely enough work for my brother and me.” Men shuffled up beside him, trying to look inside the shop. They were breathing hard, and he could smell their sweat. “Please, see all you want,” he said, moving aside. “We have nothing to hide.”

The men glanced around quickly, taking in the Hindu deities on the wall behind the cutting table. One of the saffron-shirted men stepped forward. “Listen, smart boy. If you are lying, I will myself skewer you on the three points of my trishul.”

“Why should I lie?” said Ishvar. “I’m the same as you. You think I want to die to save a Muslim?”

There was more consultation outside the shop. “Step on the pavement and remove your pyjamas,” said the leader. “Both of you.”

“What?”

“Come on, hurry up! Or you won’t need pyjamas anymore!”

In the ranks there was impatience. They banged their spears on the ground and shouted to torch the place. Ishvar and Narayan obediently dropped their pyjamas.

“It’s too dark to see,” called the leader. “Give me a lantern “The light was handed over from behind the group. He bent low, held it close to their naked crotches, and was satisfied. The others crowded round to look as well. There was general agreement that the foreskins were intact.

Now the hardware-store owner opened his upstairs window and shouted, “What’s going on? Why are you harassing Hindu boys? Have you run out of Muslims?”

“And who are you?” they shouted back.

“Who am I? I am your father and your grandfather! That’s who I am! And also the owner of this hardware store! If I give the word, the whole street will unite as one to make mincemeat of you! Don’t you have somewhere else to go?”

The leader did not think it worthwhile to take up the challenge. His men started to drift away, hurling obscenities to save face. They turned to arguing among themselves about a wasted night and faulty information that had made them look like fools.

“That was beautiful acting,” said the hardware-store owner, patting Ishvar and Narayan heartily on the back. “I was watching the whole thing from upstairs. You know, if there had been any danger of you getting hurt, I would have called everybody to help. But I thought it’s better if there is no confrontation, if you can convince them and they leave quietly.” He looked around to make sure everyone believed him.

Mumtaz fell on her knees before the two apprentices. Her dupatta slid from around her neck and draped their feet. “Please, Chachi, don’t do that,” said Ishvar, shuffling backwards.

“Forever and ever, my life, my children, my husband’s life, my home — everything, I owe to you!” She clung to them, weeping. “There is no repayment possible!”

“Please get up,” begged Ishvar, holding her wrists and trying to make her stand.

“From now on, this home is your home, as long as you will honour us with your presence!”

Ishvar finally succeeded in disentangling his ankles from her hands. “Chachi, you are like our mother, we have shared your food and home for seven years.”

“Inshallah, you will stay and eat with us for seventy more.” Still sobbing, she replaced the dupatta around her neck, lifting a corner to wipe her eyes.

Ishvar and Narayan returned downstairs. After the children were asleep, Ashraf went downstairs too. The boys had not yet rolled out their sleeping mats. The three sat silently for a few minutes. Then Ashraf said, “You know, when the banging started, I thought we were finished.”

“I was also scared,” said Narayan.

Their next silence lasted longer. Ashraf cleared his throat. “I came down to say one thing only.” Tears were rolling down his cheeks; he paused to wipe them. “The day I met your father — the day I told Dukhi to send me his two sons for tailor-training. That day was the luckiest of my life.” He embraced them, kissed their cheeks three times, and went upstairs.

Ashraf would not hear of the brothers returning to the village, and Mumtaz supported him in this. “Stay on as my paid assistants,” he said, though he knew very well he could not afford it.

Roopa protested to Dukhi that it was high time she had her two sons back. “You sent them to apprentice. Now they have learned the trade, so why are they still living with strangers? Are their own mother-father dead or something?”

But no one could predict how two Chamaars-turned-tailors would fare in the village. True, these new times were full of hope, changes were in the air, and the optimism that came with independence was shining bright. Ashraf even felt safe enough to turn over the Krishna Tailors sign and display the Muzaffar Tailoring side again.

Still, it was uncertain if centuries of tradition could be overturned as easily. So they agreed that Ishvar would stay on as Ashraf’s assistant, and Narayan would return to test the waters. This suited all sides: Muzaffar Tailoring Company would just barely support one assistant; Dukhi would have the help of wages sent from town; and Roopa would have her younger son back.

She took down the parcel that had hung from the ceiling for seven years. The string knots had shrunk and could not be untied. She cut the string, unwrapped the protective sackcloth, then washed the vest and choli. It was time to wear them again, she told Dukhi, to celebrate the homecoming.

“It hangs a little loose,” he said.

“Mine, too,” said Roopa. “The fabric must have stretched.”

He liked her explanation. It was easier than contemplating the lean years that had shrunk them both.

In the village, the Chamaar community was quietly proud of Narayan. Gradually, they found the courage to become his customers, though there was not much money in it for Narayan because they could rarely afford to have something new tailored. Garments thrown away by the upper castes clothed their bodies. Mostly, he altered or mended. He used an old hand-cranked sewing-machine that Ashraf had procured for him. It was restricted to a straight lock stitch, but sufficed for the work he did.

Business improved when word spread to neighbouring villages of the one who had done the unthinkable: abandoned leather for cloth. They came as much to see this courageous Chamaar-tailor, this contradiction in terms, as to get their clothes looked after. Many were a little disappointed with their visit. Inside the hut was nothing extraordinary, just a young man with a tape measure around his neck and a pencil behind one ear.

Narayan maintained a record of jobs and transactions as Ashraf had taught him, noting names, dates, and amounts owing. Roopa appointed herself to manage the business, standing around importantly while he measured the client and entered the figures in his book. She kept his pencils sharp with her paring knife. She could not read his register but retained an accurate account in her head. When someone who had yet to settle the balance from a previous job came with more work, she stood behind the client and rubbed her thumb and finger together to remind her son.

One morning, about six months after Narayan’s return to the village, a Bhunghi ventured towards the hut. Roopa was heating water over a fire outside, happily listening to the muffled clank of the sewing-machine, when she saw the fellow approach cautiously. “And where do you think you’re going?” she yelled, stopping him in his tracks.

“I am looking for Narayan the tailor,” said the man, timidly holding up some rags.

“What?!” His audacity flabbergasted her. “Don’t give me your tailor-failor nonsense! I’ll bathe your filthy skin with this boiling water! My son does not sew for your kind!”

“Ma! What are you doing?” shouted Narayan, emerging from the hut as the man bolted. “Wait, wait!” he yelled after the fellow. Terrified that retribution was in pursuit, the Bhunghi ran faster.

“Come back, bhai, it’s all right!”

“Another time,” called the frightened man. “Tomorrow, maybe.”

“Okay, I’11 wait for you,” said Narayan. “Please come for sure.” He returned to the hut, shaking his head and ignoring his mother who glared furiously at him.

“Dont you shake your head at me!” she said indignantly. “What-all nonsense is this, calling him back tomorrow? We are not going to deal with such low-caste people! How can you even think of measuring someone who carts the shit from people’s houses?”

Narayan was silent. After working for a few minutes, he went outside to the fire, where she was still stirring her vigorous rage into the pot.

“I think, Ma, that you are wrong,” he said, keeping his voice so soft that it was almost lost in the crackling fire. “I think I should sew for anybody who comes to me, Brahmin or Bhunghi.”

“You do, do you? Wait till your father comes home, see what he says about it! Brahmin yes, Bhunghi no!”

That evening Roopa told Dukhi about their son’s outrageous ideas, and he turned to Narayan. “I think your mother is right.”

Narayan dropped his hand from the crank and braked the fly wheel. “Why did you send me to learn tailoring?”

“That’s a stupid question. To improve your life — why else?”

“Yes. Because the uppers treat us so badly. And now you are behaving just like them. If that’s what you want, then I am going back to town. I cannot live like this anymore.”

Roopa was stunned by the ultimatum, and horrified when Dukhi turned to her and said, “I think he is right.”

“Father-of-Ishvar, make up your mind! First you say I am right, then you say he is right! From side to side you sway, like a pot without an arse! And this is what comes from sending him to town! Forgetting our village ways! It will only lead to trouble!” Boiling and bubbling, she left the hut, calling Amba, Pyari, Padma, and Savitri to come and hear what-all crazy things were happening in her unfortunate household.

“Toba, toba!” said Savitri. “Poor Roopa, so upset she is shaking.”

“Children — Hai Ram,” said Pyari, throwing up her hands. “How easily they forget about a mother’s feelings.”

“What to do,” said Amba. “We feed them milk from our breast when they are babies, but we cannot feed them good sense.”

“Be patient,” said Padma. “Everything will be all right.”

After bathing in their sympathy, Roopa was calmer. The thought of losing her son a second time made her think carefully. She forgave him his lunatic proposals and agreed to turn a blind eye to them on the basis of a compromise: she would reserve the right to control entry into her hut; some customers would have to conduct their transactions outside.

Two years later Narayan could afford to build his own hut, next to his parents’. Roopa wept that he was abandoning them. “Again and again he breaks his mother’s heart,” she complained. “How will I look after him and his business? Why must he separate?”

“But Ma, it’s only thirty feet away,” said Narayan. “You are welcome there any time to sharpen my pencils.”

“Sharpen pencils, he says! As if that’s all I do for him!”

Eventually, though, she got accustomed to the idea and made it a point of pride, speaking of the other hut to her friends as her son’s factory. He bought a large worktable, a clothes stand, and a new foot-operated sewing-machine which could do straight and zigzag stitches.

For this last purchase he went to take Ashraf Chacha’s advice. The little town had grown since his departure, and Muzaffar Tailoring Company was doing well. Ishvar had rented a room near the shop. From assistant, Ashraf had elevated him to partner. The brothers agreed that their father need not work anymore, between them they would provide for their parents.

“You are such good boys,” said Dukhi, when Narayan told him of the decision. “We are truly blessed by God.”

Roopa fetched the vest and choli made long ago by their children, and faded by now. “Remember these?”

“I didn’t know you still had them.”

“The day you and Ishvar brought these for us, you were so young, both of you,” she said, starting to cry. “But even then I knew, in my heart, that everything would be all right in the end.” She went to announce the good tidings to her friends, who hugged her and teased her that she would soon become rich and not have anything to do with them.

“But one thing is certain,” said Padma. “Time for marriage has come close.”

“You must start looking for two suitable daughters-in-law,” said Savitri.

“Don’t delay any longer,” said Pyari.

“We will help you with everything, don’t worry,” said Amba.

The happy news spread within their community, and outside it. Among the upper castes, there was still anger and resentment because of what a Chamaar had accomplished. One man in particular, Thakur Dharamsi — who always took charge of the district polls at election time, delivering votes to the political party of his choice — taunted the tailor periodically.

“There is a dead cow waiting for you,” he notified Narayan through a servant. Narayan merely passed on the message to other Chamaars, who were happy to have the carcass. Another time, when a goat perished in one of the drains on Thakur Dharamsi’s property, he sent for Narayan to unclog it. Narayan politely sent his reply that he was grateful for the offer but was no longer in this line of work.

Among the Chamaars in the village, he was now looked upon as the spokesman for their caste, their unelected leader. Dukhi wore his son’s success modestly, out of sight, indulging himself only sometimes, when he sat smoking with his friends under the tree by the river. Slowly, his son was becoming more prosperous than many upper-caste villagers. Narayan paid to have a new well dug in the untouchable section of the village. He leased the land on which the two huts stood, and replaced them with a pukka house, one of only seven in the village. It was large enough to accommodate his parents and his business. And, thought Roopa fondly, a wife and children before long.

Dukhi and she would have preferred the older son’s marrying first. But when they offered to find him a wife, Ishvar made it clear he was not interested. By now, Roopa had learned that trying to make her sons do what they did not want to do was a futile endeavour. “Learning big-town ways,” she grumbled, “forgetting our old ways,” and left it at that, turning her attention to Narayan.

They made inquiries, and a suitable girl was recommended in another village. A showing-day was fixed, when the boy’s family would call on the girl’s family. Roopa made certain that Amba, Pyari, Padma, and Savitri were included in plans for the visit — they were like family, she said. Ishvar chose not to go, but arranged a twenty-seven-seater Leyland to transport the bride-viewing party.

The battered little bus arrived in the village at nine in the morning, and stopped in a cloud of dust. The opportunity for a bus ride attracted volunteers for the auspicious event, many more than could be accommodated in that modest conveyance.

“Narayan is like a son to me,” said one. “It’s my duty to come. How can I let him down at this most important time?”

“I will not be able to hold my head up if you don’t take me,” pleaded another, refusing to take no for an answer. “Please don’t leave me behind.”

“I have attended every single bride-showing in our community,” bragged a third. “You need my expertise.”

Many took their going for granted, and climbed aboard without bothering to check with Dukhi or Roopa. When the excursion was ready to commence an hour later, there were thirty-eight people crammed inside, and a dozen sitting cross-legged on the roof. The driver, who had witnessed nasty accidents with low branches along rural roads, refused to proceed. “Get down from the top! Down, everybody, down!” he yelled at the ones settled serenely in lotus positions. So the dozen from the roof had to be left behind, and the bus set off at a sensible crawl.

They reached their destination two and a half hours later. The girl’s parents were impressed by the bus and the size of the visiting delegation, as was the entire village. The thirty-eight visitors stood around uncertainly. There was not room for everyone inside the dwelling. After much agonizing, Dukhi selected a group of seven, including his best friends, Chhotu and Dayaram. Padma and Savitri also made it in, but Amba and Pyari had to wait outside with the unlucky thirty-one, watching the proceedings through the doorway.

Inside, the inner circle had tea with the parents and described the journey. “Such fine scenery we saw along the way,” said Dukhi to the girl’s father.

“Once, all of a sudden, the bus made a big noise and stopped,” said Chhotu. “It took a while to start again. We were worried about being late.”

By and by, the parents compared genealogies and family histories, while Roopa talked modestly of Narayan’s success to the girl’s mother. “So many customers he has. Everybody wants to have clothes made by Narayan only. As if there is no other tailor in the whole country. My poor son works morning till night, sewing, sewing, sewing. But his expensive new machine is so good. What-all wonderful things it can do.”

Then it was time for the bride-viewing moment. “Come, my daughter,” called the mother casually. “Bring something sweet for our guests.”

The girl, Radha, sixteen years old, entered with a platter of laddoos. Conversation ceased. Everyone took a good look as she went around with her head modestly lowered and eyes averted. Outside, there was much whispering and jockeying for position as they tried to catch a glimpse.

Narayan kept his eyes on the laddoos when she stopped in front of him. He was nervous about looking — her family was watching for his reaction. The platter had almost reached the end of its circuit. If he didn’t see her now, there would be no second chance, she would not return, that was certain, and he would have to make a blind decision. Look, oh look! he persuaded himself — and looked. He caught a profile of her features as she bent before her mother.

“No, daughter,” said the mother, “none for me,” and with that, Radha disappeared.

Then it was time to go home. During the return journey, those who had been unable to see or hear from outside were fully briefed. Now everyone had the facts, and were able to take part in final discussions back in the village. Opinions were entertained in order of seniority.

“Her size is good, and colour is good.”

“The family also looks honest, hardworking.”

“Maybe horoscopes should be compared before final decision.”

“No horoscopes! Why horoscopes? That is all brahminical nonsense, our community does not do that.”

Thus it continued for a while, and Narayan listened silently. His approval at the end, though not essential, did serve to strengthen the consensus, to his parents’ relief and the gathering’s applause.

Now the arrangements went ahead. Some of the traditional expenditures were sidestepped at Narayan’s insistence; he did not want Radha’s family indebted to the moneylender in perpetuity. All he would accept from them were six brass vessels: three round-bottomed, and three flat.

Roopa was furious. “What-all do you understand about complicated things like dowry? Have you been married before?”

Dukhi was also upset. “Much more than six vessels is due. It is our right.”

“Since when has our community practised dowry?” asked Narayan quietly.

“If it’s okay for the uppers to do it, so can we.”

But Narayan stood firm, with Ishvar’s backing. “Learning big-town ways,” grumbled their mother, foiled again. “Forgetting our village ways.”

There was a last-minute hitch. Two days before the wedding, under coercion from Thakur Dharamsi and others, the village musicians withdrew their services. They were too frightened to even meet with the family and discuss the problem. So Ishvar arranged for replacements from town. Narayan did not mind the cost of transporting them and their instruments. It was a small price, he felt, for frustrating the landlords.

The new musicians did not know some of the local wedding songs. The elders among the guests were quite concerned — strange anthems and chants could be unpropitious for the marriage. “Especially for producing children,” said an old woman who used to assist at births before her infirmity. “The Womb doesn’t become fertile just like that, without correct procedure.”

“True,” said another. “I have seen it with my own eyes. When the songs are not sung properly, nothing but unhappiness for husband and wife.” They conferred in worried groups, debating and discussing, trying to determine the antidote that would thwart the impending ill-fortune. They looked disapprovingly at those who were enjoying all that alien music and dancing.

The celebrations lasted three days, during which Chamaar families in the village ate the best meals of their lives. Ashraf and his family, the guests of honour, were lodged and looked after in Narayan’s house, which made some people unhappy. There were mutterings about an inauspicious Muslim presence, but the protests were few and muted. And by the third night, to the elders’ relief, the musicians were able to pick up many of the local songs.

A son was born to Radha and Narayan; they named him Omprakash. People came to sing and rejoice with them at the happy occasion. The proud grandfather personally carried sweets to every house in the village.

Later that week, Dukhi’s friend Chhotu came with his wife to see the newborn. Taking Dukhi and Narayan aside, he whispered, “The uppers chucked the sweets in the garbage.”

They did not doubt his word; he would know, for he collected the trash from many of those houses. The news was hurtful but Narayan laughed it away. “More for the ones who found the packages.”

Visitors continued to arrive, marvelling at how healthy the baby looked, considering it was a Chamaar’s child, and how it was always smiling. “Even when he is hungry there is no puling or mewling,” Radha became fond of boasting. “Just makes a tiny kurr-kurr, which stops as soon as he gets my breast.”

Three daughters were born after Omprakash. Two survived. Their names were Leela and Rekha. No sweets were distributed.

Narayan began teaching his son to read and write, conducting the lessons while sewing. The man sat at the sewing-machine, the child sat with slate and chalk. By the time Omprakash was five, he could also do buttons with great style, imitating the flourish with which his father licked the thread and shot it through the needle’s eye, or his flair in stabbing the needle through the cloth.

“All day he spends stuck to his Bapa,” grumbled Radha happily, surveying the adoring father and son.

Her mother-in-law reviewed the scene and drank it in with pleasure. “Daughters are a mother’s responsibility but sons are for the father,” pronounced Roopa, as though she had been granted a brand-new revelation, and Radha received it as such, nodding solemnly.

In the week following Omprakash’s fifth birthday, Narayan took him to the tannery, where the Chamaars were busy at work. Since his return to the village, he had continued to join in their labours periodically, helping with whatever stage of skinning, curing, tanning, or dyeing that was in progress. And now he proudly showed his child how it was done.

But Omprakash held back. Narayan did not like this behaviour. He insisted the boy dirty his hands.

“Chhee! It stinks!” shrieked Omprakash.

“I know it stinks. Do it anyway.” He seized the boy’s hands and dunked them in the tanning vat, plunging him in to the elbows. He was ashamed of his son’s display before his fellow Chamaars.

“I don’t want to do this! I want to go home! Please, Bapa, take me home now!”

“Tears or no tears, you will learn this work,” said Narayan grimly.

Omprakash sobbed and wailed, going into convulsions of rage, wrenching his hands away. “You do that and I will throw your whole body inside,” his father threatened, soaking the arms again and again.

The others tried to persuade Narayan to let it be — the child might have a fit or seizure of some sort, they feared, the way he was screaming hysterically. “It’s his first day,” they said. “Next week he will do better.” But Narayan forced him to keep at it till he called a halt an hour later.

Omprakash was still crying when they got home. On the porch, Radha was massaging her mother-in-law’s scalp with coconut oil. They upset the bottle in their rush to comfort him. Roopa tried to hug her grandson but the thin grey strands hanging greasy and stiff over her forehead made him pull away. He had never seen his grandmother look so frightful.

“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.

“There must be a lot of duplication in our country’s laws,” said Dukhi. “Every time there are elections, they talk of passing the same ones passed twenty years ago. Someone should remind them they need to apply the laws.”

“For politicians, passing laws is like passing water,” said Narayan. “It all ends down the drain.”

On election day the eligible voters in the village lined up outside the polling station. As usual, Thakur Dharamsi took charge of the voting process. His system, with the support of the other landlords, had been working flawlessly for years.

The election officer was presented with gifts and led away to enjoy the day with food and drink. The doors opened and the voters filed through. “Put out your fingers,” said the attendant monitoring the queue.

The voters complied. The clerk at the desk uncapped a little bottle and marked each extended finger with indelible black ink, to prevent cheating.

“Now put your thumbprints over here,” said the clerk.

They placed their thumbprints on the register to say they had voted, and departed.

Then the blank ballots were filled in by the landlords’ men. The election officer returned at closing time to supervise the removal of ballot boxes to the counting station, and to testify that voting had proceeded in a fair and democratic manner.

Sometimes, there was more excitement if rival landlords in the district were unable to sort out their differences and ended up supporting opposing candidates. Then their gangs battled it out. Naturally, whoever captured the most polling booths and stuffed the most ballot boxes got their candidate elected.

This year, however, there were no fights or gun battles. All in all, it was a dreary day, and Omprakash was depressed as he returned home with his father and grandfather. Tomorrow he had to go back to Muzaffar Tailoring Company. The week had passed much too quickly.

They sat on the charpoy outside the house to enjoy the evening air while Omprakash fetched water for them. The trees were loud with frantic birdsong. “Next time there is an election, I want to mark my own ballot,” said Narayan.

“They won’t let you,” said Dukhi. “And why bother? You think it will change anything? Your gesture will be a bucket falling in a well deeper than centuries. The splash won’t be seen or heard.”

“It is still my right. And I will exercise it in the next election, I promise you.”

“Lately you are brooding too much about rights. Give up this dangerous habit.” Dukhi paused, brushing away a column of red ants marching towards the foot of the charpoy. The creatures scurried in all directions. “Suppose you do make the mark yourself. You think they cannot open the box and destroy the votes they don’t like?”

“They cannot. The election officer must account for every piece of paper.”

“Give up this idea. It is wasting your time — and your time is your life.”

“Life without dignity is worthless.”

The red ants had regrouped, though it was too dark for Dukhi to see. Radha brought the lamp out to the dusk-devoured porch, instantly populating it with shadows. The fragrance of wood smoke clung to her clothes. She lingered for a moment in the silence, searching her husband’s face.

“Government has no sense,” the people complained about the state assembly elections. “No sense at all. It’s the wrong month — with the earth parched and the air on fire, who has time to think about voting? Two years ago they made the same mistake.”

Narayan had not forgotten his promise to his father two years ago. He went off alone to vote that morning. The turnout was poor. A ragged queue meandered by the door of the schoolhouse set up as the polling station. Inside, the smell of chalk dust and stale food made him remember the day when he was a small boy, when he and Ishvar had been beaten by the teacher for touching the slates and books of upper-caste children.

He swallowed his fear and asked for his ballot. “No, that’s okay,” explained the men at the table. “Just make your thumbprint here, we will do the rest.”

“Thumbprint? I will sign my full name. After you give me my ballot.”

Two men in line behind Narayan were inspired by him. “Yes, give us our ballots,” they said. “We also want to make our mark.”

“We cannot do that, we don’t have instructions.”

“You don’t need instructions. It is our right as voters.”

The attendants whispered among themselves, then said, “Okay, please wait.” One of them left the polling station.

He returned shortly with a dozen men. Thakur Dharamsi, who, sixteen years ago, had ordered the musicians not to play at Narayan’s wedding, was with them. “What is it, what’s the trouble?” he asked loudly from outside.

They pointed at Narayan through the door.

“So,” muttered Thakur Dharamsi. “I should have known. And who are the other two?”

His assistant did not know their names.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Thakur Dharamsi. His men entered with him, and it became very crowded inside. He wiped his brow and held out the wet hand under Narayan’s nose. “On such a hot day you make me leave my house to sweat. Are you trying to humiliate me? Don’t you have some clothes to sew? Or a cow to poison and skin?”

“We’ll go as soon as we mark our ballots,” said Narayan. “It is our right.”

Thakur Dharamsi laughed, and his men joined in approvingly. They stopped when he stopped. “Enough jokes. Make your thumbprint and go.”

“After we vote.”

This time he did not laugh, but raised his hand as though in farewell and left the booth. The men seized Narayan and the other two. They forced their thumbs to the ink pad and completed the registration. Thakur Dharamsi whispered to his assistant to take the three to his farm.

Throughout the day, at intervals, they were flogged as they hung naked by their ankles from the branches of a banyan tree. Drifting in and out of consciousness, their screams grew faint. Thakur Dharamsi’s little grandchildren were kept indoors. “Do your lessons,” he told them. “Read your books, or play with your toys. The nice new train set I bought you.”

“But it’s a holiday,” they pleaded. “We want to play outside.”

“Not today. Some bad men are outside.” He shooed them away from the rear windows.

In the distance, in the far field, his men urinated on the three inverted faces. Semiconscious, the parched mouths were grateful for the moisture, licking the trickle with feeble urgency. Thakur Dharamsi warned his employees that for the time being the news should not spread, especially not in the downstream settlement. That might disrupt the voting and force the election commission to countermand the results, wasting weeks of work.

In the evening, after the ballot boxes were taken away, burning coals were held to the three men’s genitals, then stuffed into their mouths. Their screams were heard through the village until their lips and tongues melted away. The still, silent bodies were taken down from the tree. When they began to stir, the ropes were transferred from their ankles to their necks, and the three were hanged. The bodies were displayed in the village square.

Thakur Dharamsi’s goondas, freed now from their election duties, were turned loose upon the lower castes. “I want those achhoot jatis to learn a lesson,” he said, distributing liquor to his men before their next assignment. “I want it to be like the old days, when there was respect and discipline and order in our society. And keep an eye on that Chamaar-tailor’s house, make sure no one gets away.”

The goondas began working their way towards the untouchable quarter. They beat up individuals at random in the streets, stripped some women, raped others, burned a few huts. News of the rampage soon spread. People hid, waiting for the storm to blow over.

“Good,” said Thakur Dharamsi, as night fell and reports reached him of his men’s success. “I think they will remember this for a long time.” He ordered that the bodies of the two nameless individuals should be left by the river bank, to be reclaimed by their relations. “My heart is soft towards those two families, whoever they are,” he said. “They have suffered enough. Let them mourn their sons and cremate them.”

That was the end of the punishment, but not for Narayan’s family. “He does not deserve a proper cremation,” said Thakur Dharamsi. “And the father is more to blame than the son. His arrogance went against everything we hold sacred.” What the ages had put together, Dukhi had dared to break asunder; he had turned cobblers into tailors, distorting society’s timeless balance. Crossing the line of caste had to be punished with the utmost severity, said the Thakur.

“Catch them all — the parents, wife, children,” he told his men. “See that no one escapes.”

As the goondas broke into Narayan’s house, Amba, Pyari, Savitri, and Padma screamed from the porch to leave their friends alone. “Why are you harassing them? They have done nothing wrong!”

The women’s families pulled them back, terrified for them. Their neighbours did not dare to even look outside, cowering in their huts in shame and fear, praying that the night would pass quickly, without the violence swallowing any more innocents. When Chhotu and Dayaram tried to sneak away for help to the district thanedar, they were chased down and knifed.

Dukhi, Roopa, Radha, and the daughters were bound and dragged into the main room. “Two are missing,” said Thakur Dharamsi. “Son and grandson.” Someone checked around, and informed him that they were living in town. “Well, never mind, these five will do.”

The mutilated body was brought in and set before the captives. The room was dark. Thakur Dharamsi sent for a lamp so the family could see.

The light tore away the benevolent cloak of darkness. The naked corpse’s face was a burnt and broken blur. Only by the red birthmark on his chest could they recognize Narayan.

A long howl broke from Radha. But the sound of grief soon mingled with the family’s death agony; the house was set alight. The first flames licked at the bound flesh. The dry winds, furiously fanning the fire, showed the only spark of mercy during this night. The blaze swiftly enfolded all six of them.

By the time Ishvar and Omprakash heard the news in town, the ashes had cooled, and the charred bodies were broken and dispersed into the river. Mumtaz Chachi held Omprakash close to her while Ashraf Chacha accompanied Ishvar to the police station to register a First Information Report.

The sub-inspector, suffering from an earache, kept poking around inside with his little finger. He found it hard to concentrate. “What name? Spell it again. Slowly.”

To ingratiate themselves with the figure of authority, Ashraf advised him on a home remedy, although he was seething with anger and wanted to slap the fellow across his face to make him attend. “Warm olive oil will give you relief,” he said. “My mother used to put it for me.”

“Really? How much? Two or three drops?”

Then, with great reluctance, the police went to the house to verify the allegations in the First Information Report. They reported that nothing was found to support charges of arson and murder.

The sub-inspector was cross with Ishvar. “What kind of rascality is this? Trying to fill up the F.I.R. with lies? You filthy achhoot castes are always out to make trouble! Get out before we charge you with public mischief!”

Too stunned to speak, Ishvar looked at Ashraf, who tried to intervene. The sub-inspector cut him off rudely: “This matter doesn’t concern your community. We don’t interfere when you Muslims and your mullahs discuss problems in your community, do we?”

For the next two days, Ashraf kept the shop closed, crushed by the helplessness he felt. Mumtaz and he did not dare console Omprakash or Ishvar — what words were there for such a loss, and for an injustice so immense? The best they could do was weep with them.

On the third day, Ishvar asked him to open up the shop, and they began sewing again.

“I will gather a small army of Chamaars, provide them with weapons, then march to the landlords’ houses,” said Omprakash, his sewing-machine racing. “It will be easy to find enough men. We’ll do it like the Naxalites.” Head bent over his work, he described for Ishvar and Ashraf Chacha the strategies employed by the peasant uprisings in the northeast. “At the end of it we’ll cut off their heads and put them on spikes in the marketplace. Their kind will never dare to oppress our community again.”

Ishvar let him entertain his thoughts of revenge. His own first impulse had been the same; how could he blame his nephew? The hands were easy to divert with sewing, but the tormented mind was difficult to free from turmoil. “Tell me, Om, how do you know so much of this?”

“I read about it in newspapers. But isn’t it common sense? In every low-caste family there is someone mistreated by zamindars. They will be eager to take revenge, for sure. We’ll slaughter the Thakurs and their goondas. And those police devils.”

“And afterwards, what?” asked Ishvar gently, when he felt it was time for his nephew to turn his thoughts away from death, towards life. “They will take you to court and hang you.”

“I don’t care. I would be dead anyway if I was living with my parents, instead of safely in this shop.”

“Om, my child,” said Ashraf. “Vengeance should not be our concern. The murderers will be punished. Inshallah, in this world or the next. Maybe they already have, who knows?”

“Yes, Chachaji, who knows?” echoed Omprakash sarcastically and went to bed.

Since that terrible night six months ago, Ishvar had given up their lodging in the rooming house, at Ashraf’s insistence. There was plenty of space in the house, he claimed, now that his daughters had all married and left. He partitioned the room over the shop — one side for Mumtaz and himself, the other for Ishvar and his nephew.

They heard Omprakash moving around upstairs, getting ready for bed. Mumtaz sat at the back of the house, praying. “This revenge talk is okay if it remains talk,” said Ishvar. “But what if he goes back to the village, does something foolish.”

They fretted and agonized for hours over the boy’s future, then ascended the stairs to retire for the night. Ashraf followed Ishvar around the partition where Omprakash lay sleeping, and they stood together for a while, watching him.

“Poor child,” whispered Ashraf. “So much he has suffered. How can we help him?”

The answer, in time, was provided by the faltering fortunes of Muzaffar Tailoring Company.

A year had passed since the murders when a ready-made clothing store opened in town. Before long, Ashraf’s list of clients began to shrink.

Ishvar said the loss would be temporary. “A big new shop with stacks of shirts to choose from — that attracts the customers. It makes them feel important, trying on different patterns. But the traitors will return when the novelty wears off and the clothes don’t fit.”

Ashraf was not so optimistic. “Those lower prices will defeat us. They make clothes by the hundreds in big factories, in the city. How can we compete?”

Soon the two tailors and apprentice were lucky to find themselves busy one day a week. “Strange, isn’t it,” said Ashraf. “Something I’ve never even seen is ruining the business I have owned for forty years.”

“But you’ve seen the ready-made shop.”

“No, I mean the factories in the city. How big are they? Who owns them? What do they pay? None of this I know, except that they are beggaring us. Maybe I’ll have to go and work for them in my old age.”

“Never,” said Ishvar. “But perhaps I should go.”

“Nobody is going anywhere,” Ashraf’s fist banged the worktable. “We will share what there is here, I said it only as a joke. You think I would really send away my own children?”

“Don’t be upset, Chachaji, I know you didn’t mean it.”

Before long, however, the joke turned into a serious consideration as customers continued to flee to the ready-made store. “If it goes on like this, the three of us will be sitting from morning till night, swatting flies,” said Ashraf. “For me, it does not matter. I have lived my life — tasted its fruit, both sweet and bitter. But it is so unfair to Om.” He lowered his voice. “Maybe it would be best for him to try elsewhere.”

“But wherever he goes, I would have to go,” said Ishvar. “He is still too young, too many foolish ideas clogging his head.”

“Not his fault, the devil encourages him. Of course you have to be with him, you are now his father. What you can both do is, go for a short time. Doesn’t have to be permanent. A year or two. Work hard, earn money, and come back.”

“That’s true. They say you can make money very quickly in the city, there is so much work and opportunity.”

“Exactly. And with that cash you can open some kind of business here when you return. A paan shop, or a fruit stall, or toys. You can even sell ready-made clothes, who knows.” They laughed at this, but agreed that a couple of years away would be best for Omprakash.

“There is only one difficulty in the way,” said Ishvar. “I don’t know anyone in the city. How to get started?”

“Everything will fall into place. I have a very good friend who will help you find work. His name is Nawaz. He is also a tailor, has his own shop there.”

They sat up past midnight, making plans, imagining the new future in the city by the sea, the city that was filled with big buildings, wide, wonderful roads, beautiful gardens, and millions and millions of people working hard and accumulating wealth.

“Look at me, getting excited as if I was leaving with you,” said Ashraf. “And if I was younger I would, too. It will be lonely here. My dream was that you and Om would be with me till the end of my days.”

“But we will be,” said Ishvar. “Om and I will return soon. Isn’t that the plan?”

Ashraf wrote to his friend requesting him to put up Ishvar and Omprakash when they arrived, help them settle in the city. Ishvar withdrew his savings from the post office and purchased train tickets.

The night before departure, Ashraf gifted them his treasured pair of dressmaking and pinking shears. Ishvar protested it was too much. “Our family has already received so many kindnesses from you, for more than thirty years.”

“An eternity of kindness could not repay what you and Narayan did for my family,” said Ashraf, swallowing. “Come on, put the shears in your trunk, make an old man happy.” He dried his eyes but they grew moist again. “Remember, you are welcome here at any time if it does not work out.”

Ishvar clasped his hand and held it to his chest. “Maybe you will visit the city before we come back.”

“Inshallah. I have always wanted to go on haj once before I die. And the big boats all sail from the city. So who knows?”

Mumtaz woke early the next morning to make their tea and prepare a food package for their journey. Ashraf sat silent while they ate, overcome by the moment. He spoke only once, to ask, “You have Nawaz’s address safe in your pocket?”

They drained their cups and Omprakash gathered them for washing. “Let it be,” a tearful Mumtaz stopped him. “I’ll do it afterwards.”

It was time to leave. They hugged Ashraf and Mumtaz, kissing their cheeks three times. “Ah, these useless old sockets of mine,” said Ashraf. “They keep leaking, it’s a sickness.”

“And we are catching it from you,” said Ishvar, as he and Omprakash wiped their own eyes. The sun had not yet risen when they picked up the trunk and bedding and walked towards the railway line.

It was night when the tailors arrived in the city. Groaning and clanking, the train pulled into the station while an announcement blared like gibberish from the loudspeakers. Passengers poured out into the sea of waiting friends and families. There were shrieks of recognition, tears of happiness. The platform became a roiling swirl of humanity. Coolies conducted aggressive forays to offer their muscular services.

Ishvar and Omprakash stood frozen on the edge of the commotion. The sense of adventure that had flowered reluctantly during the journey wilted. “Hai Ram,” said Ishvar, wishing for a familiar face. “What a huge crowd.”

“Come on,” said Omprakash. He took the trunk, struggling urgently against the barrier of bodies and luggage, as though assured that once they were past it, everything would be all right — the city of promise lay beyond this final obstacle.

They ploughed their way through the platform and emerged in the railway station’s gigantic concourse, with its ceilings high as the sky and columns reaching up like impossible trees. They wandered around in a daze, making inquiries, asking for assistance. People fired back hurried answers to their questions, or pointed, and they nodded gratefully but learned nothing. It took them an hour to discover they needed a local train to reach Ashraf’s friend. The journey took twenty minutes.

Someone they asked for directions pointed them down the right road. The shop-cum-residence was a ten-minute walk from the station. The pavements were covered with sleeping people. A thin yellow light from the streetlamps fell like tainted rain on the rag-wrapped bodies, and Omprakash shivered. “They look like corpses,” he whispered. He gazed hard at them, searching for a sign of life — a rising chest, a quivering finger, a fluttering eyelid. But the lamplight was not sufficient for detecting minute movements.

Relief began replacing their fears as they neared the home of Ashraf Chachas friend. The nightmare of arrival was about to end. To get to the shop they crossed the planks thrown across the open sewer. Omprakash’s foot almost went through a rotten patch in the wood. Ishvar grabbed his elbow. They knocked on the door.

“Salaam alaikum,” they greeted Nawaz, gazing upon him with expressions appropriate towards a benefactor.

Nawaz barely reciprocated the greeting. He pretended to know nothing about their coming. After numerous denials he conceded there had been a letter from Ashraf, and grudgingly agreed to let them sleep under the awning behind the kitchen for a few days, till they found accommodation. “I do this for no one but Ashraf,” he emphasized. “The thing is, there is hardly room here for my own family.”

“Thank you, Nawazbhai,” said Ishvar. “Yes, just for a few days, thank you.”

They could smell food cooking, but Nawaz did not invite them to eat. Finding a tap outside the building, they washed their hands and faces, and drank, cupping their palms. Light from the house spilled out through the kitchen window. They sat below it and finished the chapatis Mumtaz Chachi had packed, listening to noises from the buildings around them.

The ground under the awning was littered with leaves, potato peelings, unidentifiable fruit stones, fish bones, and two fish heads with vacant eye sockets. “How can we sleep here?” said Omprakash. “It’s filthy.”

He looked around, and spied a besom beside Nawaz’s back door, propped against the downpipe. He borrowed it to sweep the rubbish aside, while Ishvar brought mugfuls of water and splashed the ground before giving it a second going-over with the besom.

The sound brought Nawaz out to investigate. “This place not good enough for you? No one is forcing you to stay.”

“No no, it’s perfect,” said Ishvar. “Just cleaning it a little.”

“That’s my property you are using,” he pointed to the besom.

“Yes, we were — ”

“The thing is, you must ask before you take something,” he snapped and went in.

They waited till it was dry under the awning, then unrolled their sleeping mats and blankets. Noise from the surrounding buildings did not abate. Radios blared. A man yelled at a woman, beating her, stopping for a bit when she screamed for help, then starting again. A drunkard shouted abuse, and there was boisterous laughter at his expense. The grind of the traffic was constant. A flickering glow at one window made Omprakash curious; he rose and peered inside. He beckoned to Ishvar to come, look. “Doordarshan!” he whispered excitedly. After a minute or two, someone inside spotted them gazing at the television and told them to be off.

They returned to their bedding and slept badly. Once, they were awakened by shrieks that seemed to come from an animal being slaughtered.

There was no offer of morning tea from inside the house, which Omprakash found quite offensive. “Customs are different in the city,” said Ishvar.

They washed, drank water, and waited around till Nawaz opened his shop. He saw them on the steps, craning, trying to look inside. “Yes? What do you want?”

“Sorry to trouble you, but do you know we are also tailors?” said Ishvar. “Can we do sewing for you? In your shop? Ashraf Chacha told us — ”

“The thing is, there is not enough work,” said Nawaz, retreating within as he spoke. “You will have to search elsewhere.”

Ishvar and Om wondered aloud on the steps outside — was this it, the full extent of Nawaz’s help? But he came back in a minute with paper and pencil for them, dictating names of tailoring shops and instructions to get there. They thanked him for the advice.

“By the way,” said Ishvar, “we heard some terrible screams last night. Do you know what happened?”

“It was those pavement-dwellers. One fellow was sleeping in someone else’s spot. So they took a brick and bashed his head. Animals, that’s what they all are.” He returned to his work, and the tailors left.

After stopping for tea in a stall at the street corner, the two spent a futile, frightening day locating the addresses. The street signs were missing sometimes, or obscured by political posters and advertisements. They had to stop frequently to ask storekeepers and hawkers for directions.

They tried to follow the injunction repeated on several billboards: “Pedestrians! Walk On Pavement!” But this was difficult because of vendors who had set up shop on the concrete. So they walked on the road with the rest, terrified by the cars and buses, marvelling at the crowds who negotiated the traffic nimbly, with an instinct for skipping out of the way when the situation demanded.

“Just takes practice,” said Om with an experienced air.

“Practice at what? Killing or getting killed? Don’t act smart, you’ll get run over.”

But the only mishap they witnessed that day involved a man’s handcart; the rope securing a stack of boxes snapped, scattering the goods. They helped him to reload the cart.

“What’s in them?” asked Om, curious about the rattling.

“Bones,” said the man.

“Bones? From cows and buffaloes?”

“From people like you and me. For export. It’s a very big business.”

They were glad when the cart rolled away. “If I knew what was inside, I would never have stopped to help,” said Ishvar.

By evening, the addresses on the list had been exhausted, yielding neither work nor hope. They tried to make their way back to Nawaz’s shop. Though they had walked this route in the morning, nothing seemed familiar now. Or everything looked the same. Either way it was confusing. Approaching darkness made it worse. The cinema billboards they had hoped to use as landmarks led them astray because all of a sudden there seemed to be so many of them. Was it a right turn or left at the Bobby advertisement? Was it the lane with the poster of Amitabh Bachchan facing a hail of bullets while kicking a machine-gun-wielding-villain in the face, or the one with him flashing a hero-type smile at a demure, rustic maiden?

Famished and tired, they at last found Nawaz’s street, and debated whether to buy food before returning to the awning. “Better not,” decided Ishvar. “Nawaz and his bibi will be insulted if they are expecting us to eat with them today. Maybe last night they were just unprepared.”

Their host was at his sewing-machine as they passed the shop. They waved but he didn’t appear to notice, and they went round to the back. “I am finished,” said Omprakash, unrolling the bedding and letting himself drop.

Lying on their backs, they listened to Nawaz’s wife working in the kitchen. A tap was running, glasses rattled, and something clanged. Presently they heard his voice calling “Miriam!” She left the kitchen, and her words were too soft for them to hear. Then from the front came his loud, surly tone again, “No need for all that, I told you already.”

“But it’s just a little tea,” said Miriam. Now husband and wife were both in the kitchen.

“Haramzadi! Don’t argue with me! No means no!” They heard the sharp sound of a slap, and Omprakash flinched. A cry escaped her lips. “Let them go to a restaurant! The thing is, you pamper them and they’ll never leave!”

Miriam’s sobs prevented them outside from picking up what she said, except for fragments: “But why…” and then “… Ashraf’s family…”

“Not my family,” he spat.

The tailors left the awning and went to the stall where they had stopped for morning tea. After devouring a plate of puri-bhaji, Omprakash said, “What I wonder is, how Ashraf Chacha can have someone so horrible for his friend.”

“All people are not the same. Besides, Nawaz’s years in the city must have altered him. Places can change people, you know. For better or worse.”

“Maybe. But Ashraf Chacha would be ashamed to hear him now. If only we had somewhere else to stay.”

“Patience, Om. This is our first day. We’ll find something soon.”

But in four weeks of searching, they obtained a mere three days of work, at a place called Advanced Tailoring. The proprietor, a man named Jeevan, hired them to meet a deadline. The work was very simple: dhotis and shirts, a hundred of each.

“Who needs so many?” asked Omprakash in amazement.

Jeevan strummed his pursed lips with one finger, as though checking the instrument for tuning. He did this whenever he was about to make what he thought was a significant utterance. “Don’t repeat it to anyone — the clothes are for bribes.” Ordered by someone running in a by-election, he explained. The candidate was going to distribute them to certain important people in his constituency.

There was room for only one tailor in Advanced Tailoring, but Jeevan had props in the back that quickly converted the place into a workshop for three. At a height of four feet from the floor, he arranged planks horizontally on brackets in the walls, making a temporary loft. The planks were supported below with bamboo poles. Then he rented two sewing-machines, hoisted them into the loft, and sent Ishvar and Om up after them.

They settled gingerly on their stools. “Don’t be scared,” said Jeevan, strumming his lips. “Nothing will happen to you, I have done this many times before. Look, I am working under you — if you collapse, I also get crushed.”

The structure was shaky, and trembled heavily when the treadles worked. Traffic passing in the street made Ishvar and Om jiggle up and down on the stools. If a door slammed somewhere in the building, their scissors rattled. But they soon got used to the unsteadiness of their existence.

Returning to solid earth after working twenty hours a day for three days, they found the absence of vibrations quite strange. They thanked Jeevan, helped him dismantle the loft, and returned exhausted to their awning.

“Now for some rest,” said Omprakash. “I want to sleep the whole day.”

Nawaz came repeatedly to register his disapproval while they lay recovering. He posed in the back door, looking disgusted, or muttering to Miriam about useless, lazy people. “The thing is, work only comes to those who genuinely want it,” he preached. “These two are wasters.”

Ishvar and Omprakash were too tired to feel indignation, let alone anything stronger. After their day of recuperation, it was back to the routine: asking for directions in the morning and searching for work until evening.

“God knows how much longer we have to suffer those two,” the complaint emerged through the kitchen window. Nawaz did not trouble to lower his voice. “I told you to refuse Ashraf. But did you listen?”

“They do not bother us,” she whispered. “They only — ”

“Careful, that one hurts, you’ll cut my toe!”

Ishvar and Omprakash exchanged questioning looks while Nawaz continued his harangue. “The thing is, if I wanted people living under my back awning, I would rent it for good money. You know how dangerous it is, keeping them for so long? All they have to do is file a claim for the space, and we’d be stuck in court for — aah! Haramzadi, I said be careful! You’ll make a cripple out of me, slashing away with your blade!”

The tailors sat up, startled. “I have to see what’s going on,” whispered Omprakash.

He stretched up on tiptoe and peered through the kitchen window. Nawaz was seated on a chair, his foot upon a low stool. Miriam knelt before it with a safety razor blade, slicing away slivers of tough skin from his corns and calluses.

Omprakash lowered himself from the window and described the sight for his uncle. They chuckled a long time about it. “What I am wondering is, how that chootia gets corns if he sits at his sewing-machine all day,” said Omprakash.

“Maybe he walks a lot in his dreams,” said Ishvar.

Roughly four months after the tailors’ arrival, Nawaz began scolding them one morning when they asked him for advice. “Every day you pester me while I am working. This is a very big city. You think I know the names of all the tailors in it? Go search for yourself. And if you cannot find tailoring, try other things. Be a coolie at the railway station. Use your heads, carry wheat and rice for ration-shop customers. Do something, anything.”

Omprakash could see his uncle discomposed by the outburst, so he was quick to retort. “We wouldn’t mind that at all. But it would be an insult to Ashraf Chacha who trained us for so many years and gave us his skills.”

Nawaz was embarrassed by the reminder of that name. “The thing is, I am very busy right now,” he mumbled. “Please go.”

In the street, Ishvar patted his nephew’s back. “Sabaash, Om. That was a first-class reply you gave him.”

“The thing is,” mimicked Omprakash, “the thing is, I am such a first-class fellow.” They laughed and toasted their tiny victory with half-glasses of tea at the street corner. The celebration was short-lived, however, extinguished by the reality of their dwindling savings. Out of desperation Ishvar took up work for a fortnight in a cobbler’s shop that specialized in custom-made shoes and sandals. His job was to prepare the leather for soles and heels. To induce the hardness required in this type of leather, the shop used vegetable tanning. He was familiar with the process from his village days.

They kept the job a secret, for Ishvar was much ashamed of it. The reek from his hands was strong, and he preserved his distance from Nawaz.

Another month passed, their sixth in the city, with their prospects bleak as ever, when Nawaz opened the back door one evening and said, “Come in, come in. Have some tea with me. Miriam! Three teas!”

They approached and put their heads around the doorway. Had they heard him correctly, they wondered?

“Don’t stand there — come, sit,” he said cheerfully. “There is good news. The thing is, I have work for you.”

“Oh, thank you!” said Ishvar, instantly bursting with gratitude. “That’s the best news! You won’t be sorry, we will sew beautifully for your customers — ”

“Not in my shop,” Nawaz rudely snuffed out the exuberance. “It’s somewhere else.” He tried to be pleasant again, smiling and continuing. “You will enjoy this job, believe me. Let me tell you more about it. Miriam! Three teas, I said! Where are you?”

She entered with three glasses. Ishvar and Omprakash stood up, joining their palms: “Salaam, bibi.” They had heard her gentle silvery voice often, but it was the first time they found themselves face to face with her. In a manner of speaking, that is, for a black burkha hid her countenance. Her eyes, caged behind the two lace-covered openings, were sparkling.

“Ah, good, tea is ready at last,” said Nawaz. He pointed out the spot where he wanted the glasses set down, then waved his hand at her in a curt dismissal.

After a few sips he got back to business. “A rich Parsi lady came here this afternoon while you were out. Her shoe fell in the gutter.” He snickered. “The thing is, she has a very big export company, and is looking for two good tailors. Her name is Dina Dalai and she left her address for you.” He drew it out of his shirt pocket.

“Did she say what kind of sewing?”

“Top quality, latest fashions. But easy to do — she said paper patterns will be provided.” He watched them anxiously. “You will go, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” said Ishvar.

“Good, good. The thing is, she said she was handing out these slips at many shops. So lots of tailors will be applying.” On the back of the paper he wrote down directions and the train station where they should get off. “Now don’t get lost on your way there. Go to sleep early tonight, wake up early in the morning. Nice and fresh, clear-headed, so you can win the job from the lady.”

Like a mother bustling her charges on the first day of school, Nawaz opened the back door at dawn and roused them by shaking their shoulders, presenting a big smile to their reluctant eyelids. “You don’t want to be late. Please come in for tea after washing and gargling. Miriam! Two teas for my friends!”

He murmured encouragement, advice, caution while they drank. “The thing is, you have to impress the lady. But it must not sound like big talk. Answer all her questions politely, and never interrupt her. Don’t scratch your head or any other part — fine women like her hate that habit. Speak with confidence, in a medium voice. And take a comb with you, make sure you look neat and tidy before you ring her doorbell. Bad hair makes a very bad impression.”

They listened eagerly, Omprakash making a mental note to buy a new pocket-comb; he had broken his, last week. When the tea was drunk Nawaz sped them on their way. “Khuda hafiz, and come back soon. Come back successful.”

They returned after three o’clock, explaining sheepishly to an anxious Nawaz that though they had got there on time, finding the train station for the return journey had been difficult.

“But that would be the same station you got off at in the morning.”

“I know,” Ishvar smiled embarrassedly. “I just cannot tell what happened. The place was so far, we had never been there before, and we-”

“Never mind,” said Nawaz, magnanimous. “A new destination always seems further away than it really is.”

“Every street looks the same. Even when you ask people, the directions are confusing. Even that nice college boy we met on the train had the same problem.”

“You be careful who you talk to. This is not your village. Nice boy could steal your money, cut your throat and throw you in the gutter.”

“Yes, but he was very kind, he even shared his watermelon sherbet with us and — ”

“The thing is, did you get the work?”

“Oh yes, we start from Monday,” said Ishvar.

“That’s wonderful. Many, many congratulations and felicitations. Come inside, sit with me, you must be tired. Miriam! Three teas!”

“You are too generous,” said Omprakash. “Just like Ashraf Chacha.”

The sarcasm was lost on Nawaz. “Oh, it’s my responsibility to help Ashraf’s friends. And now that you have found jobs, my next duty is to find you a place to stay.”

“No rush, Nawazbhai,” said Ishvar, mildly alarmed. “We are happy where we are, your awning is beautiful, very comfortable.”

“Just leave it to me. The thing is, it’s almost impossible in this city to find a house. When something becomes available you must grab it. Come on, finish your tea, let’s go.”

“Last stop!” called the conductor, clanging his ticket punch against the chrome railing. The bus skirted the gloomy slum lanes, groaned as it turned the corner, and stopped.

“This one is the new colony,” said Nawaz, indicating the field which was in the process of being annexed by the slum. “Let’s find the man in charge.”

They entered between two rows of shacks, and Nawaz asked someone if Navalkar was around. The woman pointed. They found him in a shack that was his office.

“Yes,” said Navalkar, “we still have a few places for rent.” His straggly moustache fluttered with studied exaggeration in front of his mouth when he spoke. “Let me show you.”

They returned through the two rows of shacks. “This corner house,” said Navalkar. “It’s vacant, if you want it. Come, look inside.”

As he opened the door of the shack, a pariah dog departed through a hole in the back. The mud floor was partially covered with planks. “You can put more pieces of wood if you like,” suggested Navalkar. The walls were a patchwork, part plywood and part sheet metal. The roof was old corrugated iron, waterproofed in corroded areas with transparent plastic.

“The tap is out there, in the middle of the lane. Most convenient. You won’t have to go far for water, like they do in other inferior colonies. This is a nice place.” He swept his arm around to take in the field. “Newly developed, not too crowded. The rent is one hundred rupees per month. In advance.”

Nawaz tapped the walls with his fingers like a doctor examining a chest, then stamped his foot on a floor plank, making it wobble. He made an approving face. “Well built,” he whispered to the tailors.

Navalkar gave a circular nod. “We have even better huts. You want to see?”

“No harm in looking,” said Nawaz.

They were led behind the rows of tin-and-plastic jhopadpattis to a set of eight brick-walled huts. The roofs once again were of rusted corrugated metal. “These are two hundred and fifty rupees per month. But for that money you get a pukka floor, and electric light.” He pointed to the poles that fed wires to the huts, pirated from the streetlighting supply.

Inside, Nawaz inspected the bare bricks and scratched one with his thumb nail. “Very good quality,” he said. “You want to know what I think? For the first month, take the cheaper house. Then if your job goes well and you can afford it, move to this one.”

Navalkar kept up his circular nodding. The tailors’ silence made Nawaz uneasy. “What’s the matter, you don’t like it?”

“No no, it’s very nice. But money is the problem.”

“Money is a problem for everyone,” said Navalkar. “Unless you are a politician or a blackmarketeer.”

When the forced laughter concluded, Ishvar said, “The advance rent is difficult.”

“Don’t you have even a hundred rupees?” asked Nawaz disbelievingly.

“It’s because of the tailoring lady. She told us we must bring our own sewing-machines. And we have just enough for the rental deposit. These last few months without work, we have been spending and-”

“You useless people!” Nawaz spat, seeing his plan to be rid of them begin to disintegrate. “Wasting your money!”

“If we can stay with you a little longer,” pleaded Ishvar, “we could save enough-”

“You think this house is going to wait for you?” he snarled, and Navalkar shook his head on cue.

Desperate, Nawaz turned to him. “Can you make an exception, Mr. Navalkar? Twenty-five rupees today, which I will pay. And twenty-five from the tailors each week, for the rest.”

Navalkar curled his lips, gnawing at the moustache with his lower incisors. He brushed back the wet hairs with his knuckles. “For your sake only. Because I trust you.”

Nawaz counted out the money before any minds could be changed. They returned to the first shack, where Navalkar put a lock on the plywood door and gave the key to Ishvar. “Your house now. Live well.”

They picked their way through the cracked earth of the field and waited at the bus stop. The tailors looked worried. “My congratulations and felicitations to you again,” said Nawaz. “In one day you have found jobs and a new house.”

“Only with your help,” said Ishvar. “Is Navalkar the landlord?”

Nawaz laughed. “Navalkar is a little crook working for a big crook. A slumlord called Thokray, who controls everything in this area — country liquor, hashish, bhung. And when there are riots, he decides who gets burned and who survives.”

Seeing the apprehension on Ishvar’s face, he added, “You don’t have to deal with him. Just pay your rent regularly, you will be all right.”

“But then, whose land is this?”

“No one’s. The city owns it. These fellows bribe the municipality, police, water inspector, electricity officer. And they rent to people like you. No harm in it. Empty land sitting useless — if homeless people can live there, what’s wrong?”

On this last night, Nawaz’s relief spurred him to greater generosity. “Please eat with me,” he invited them in. “Honour me at least once before you go. Miriam! Three dinners!”

He inquired if they were happy under the back awning. “If you prefer, you can sleep indoors. The thing is, that’s where I was going to put you anyway, when you first arrived. But I thought to myself, the house is so cramped and crowded, better outside in the fresh air.”

“Yes yes, much better,” said Ishvar. “We have to thank you for your kindness for six months.”

“Has it really been that long? How fast the time has flown.”

Miriam brought the food to the table and left. Even obscured by the burkha, Ishvar and Omprakash had been able to see her eyes cloud with embarrassment at her husband’s hypocrisy.