The Walls of Delhi

MOHANDAS

What is the colour of fear? Is it the colour of dirt, or of stone? Is it yellow, charcoal? Or the colour of ash left over from a burning coal — ash that coats the coal still glowing red-hot, that still has its heat! Or a colour that masks a terrifying silence behind it? A small tear that exposes a frightful scream suspended behind.

Have you ever seen the bloodshot, dying eyes of a fish thrown from an ocean or a river, onto a sandy bank or shore? That’s the colour.

The most talented actor, no matter how hard he tries, can’t quite make the whites of his eyes or his pupils imitate the colour you see in the face of a living, breathing man who is scared clear out of his wits. Like a man going home after a hard day’s work, exhausted, satchel in hand, penny candy and cheap toys for his kids in the bag, along with a few pills for his wife’s cough. The man turns the corner into a deserted alley to find himself caught in the middle of a riot — and, unfortunately for him, he’s the wrong religion or race as far as the gang or mob that’s surrounding him is concerned.

The look in the doomed man’s eyes, on his face, the posture of his body right at that moment, just a second or two before his murder — that’s the colour I’m talking about, and that was the colour of Mohandas’ face that day.

I’m sure you’ve seen films like Schindler’s List or others that show German trains being sent somewhere far away. You remember the faces of the Jewish women, children, and the old men, pressed up against the insides of the railway cars, peering out. Or, more recently, the faces of those looking out from windows and rooftops in the cities and towns of Gujarat.

That’s the colour.

‘Is there any way you can get me out of this, uncle, please!’ Mohandas stood in front of me pleading in a weak, wavering voice. ‘I’m begging you, think of my kids, my father’s dying of TB, just give the word and I’m ready to go to court right away and sign a sworn statement that I am not Mohandas. I don’t know anyone by that name. Just help get me out of this!’

The first thing you’ll feel when you look at Mohandas is pity, but soon you’ll also feel fear. It’s a frightening time, and people are getting more and more fearful every day.

I’ve known Mohandas for a long time, along with several generations of his family. That’s how it is in little villages like ours. You wouldn’t guess by looking at him that he was a graduate of our government M.G. Degree College, located right here in the Anuppur district, or that he graduated at the very top of his class; ten years ago, his name was number two on the list of the University’s ‘toppers’. The way he looked now gave no indication whatsoever of his past. He wore a torn, patched-up, washed-out pair of denim pants that had once been blue, and a cheap poly blend shirt with a frayed right sleeve. The faintest trace of a checked pattern remained on the shirt, but the lines had long since vanished. His cheap rubber shoes had been so ravaged by mud, dirt, misery, time, water, and sun that they sometimes looked as if they were made from clay, other times from skin.

Mohandas is probably around forty-five, but he looks as if he’s at least my age or older.

I found him discombobulated, in the grip of terror. I had never seen him idling in the village, shooting the breeze, playing cards, or sitting around watching TV. He was driven by a kind of harrowing restlessness that wouldn’t let him sit still for a second. People said he always found something to keep him busy, some job or chore. He needed to dig a new well every day for his water, and plant a new crop of wheat every day for his bread. And it wasn’t just one member of his family he had to provide food for — there were five, five mouths and five stomachs. Mohandas’s father was Kabadas, who’d been suffering from TB for eight years. His mother Putlibai had gone blind after a cataract operation she’d had at a free eye clinic, and now saw nothing but darkness. His wife Kasturibai was a mirror image of her husband: she helped Mohandas with his work, and kept the stove warm at home. The people in the village claimed the two had never been seen fighting or quarrelling. It seemed there had been nothing but trials and tribulations for husband and wife — things that either strengthen or weaken a union between a man and a woman.

Devdas is one of the two remaining people, and Sharda the other. Mohandas and Kasturi had two offspring. One was eight, the other six. Devdas went to primary school in the village; after school he worked as a helper at Durga Auto Works on the town bypass road, where he put air in tires, fixed flat ones, and did minor repair work on scooters and motorcycles. For this he earned a hundred rupees a month. In other words, Mohandas’s son Devdas, through his own hard work, took care of feeding himself while he was at school; he was self-sufficient. The teachers at his school said he was one of the brightest kids in fourth grade.

But something caught Mohandas’s eye when he was told this, and his gaze wandered. Maybe he noticed something far off in the sky. The wrinkles tensed on his face and the sparkle vanished from his eyes. A gruff voice emerged as if out of some deep cavern: ‘I finished my BA, with honours. Studied day and night. Look where it got me.’

And then the twinkle would return, and his cracked lips broke into a smile. ‘I’m learning computers now. I go to the Star Computer Centre near the bus stand. Shakil owns the computer centre, he’s the son of Mohammad Imran who runs the building supply and hardware store, and he told me, “If you can learn how to type well, do layout and printing, I’ll pay you more than six hundred a month.”’ Mohandas continued, ‘This month I’m up to thirty words per minute. I’m working a few small typing jobs, but the thing is that it takes a lot of time to correct the mistakes, and I make a lot of them.’

But this was old news. A serious calamity had now befallen Mohandas, who kept repeating:

‘My name isn’t Mohandas. I’m ready to go to court and sign an affidavit. Whoever wants to be Mohandas, let him be Mohandas. Please, do whatever you can to help! I beg all of you!’

What sort of dire straits was Mohandas in?

But before getting into that, I’d first like to finish describing the fifth member of Mohandas’s family, his six-year-old daughter, Sharda. Six-year-old Sharda goes to school in the government primary school in the village, and is a student in the second grade. After school, she sets off for Bichhiya Tola, another village that’s two-and-a-half kilometres away, crossing two ponds on the way. She doesn’t get back home before half past nine or ten at night. In Bichhiya Tola she looks after the one-year-old son of Bisnath Prasad, and does household chores like sweeping and cleaning. In exchange for her services, she’s fed supper and given thirty rupees a month.

Nagendranath was one of the major farmers of Bichhiya village. He was also a manager in the life insurance company; his connections reached everyone from the district collector to the local MP. He’d been head of the local panchayat twice and the district director once. Bisnath Prasad, whose one-year-old was looked after by Sharada, was one of the sons of Nagendranath, one of the village elders. Even though his real name was Vishwanath Prasad, everyone in the village called him Bisnath, and said behind his back, ‘He’s a real viper, a first-rate poison pusher. One squirt from his mouth and the show’s over! The father’s Cobranath and the son’s Vipernath. If he spies you and starts to smile, words dripping with honey — better watch out! That means he’s ready to strike.’ Of all the things Bisnath possessed, honour was not among them. Sometimes he’d get drunk and say, ‘Pull the wool over someone’s eyes? That’s fun, but what’s more fun is pulling down the skirt of your wife and finding her wool, ha!’ No gentle words were ever spoken about the people he consorted with, either from within the village, or without.

Bisnath was from a high caste, Mohandas a low Kabirpanthi weaver. Many of Mohandas’s brethren still wove mats and rugs and blankets. Mohandas wasn’t merely the first member of his community from the village to get a college degree, but the first in the entire region. And he not only finished his degree, but also graduated second in his class.

(Please stop for a moment and tell the truth: did you begin to get the feeling that I’d gone and started telling you some kind of encoded, symbol-laden tale? The main character of the story is called Mohandas, the wife is Kasturibai, the mother is Putlibai and the son’s name is Devdas…?

Kasturibai reminds you of Kasturba — and, well, Mohandas couldn’t be more clear. If you read Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, also known as The Story of My Experiments with Truth, you’ll discover that his father, Karamchand, was also called Kaba. And His mother was Putlibai… and who doesn’t know the tale of his son, Devdas? Look at Mohandas, his build, and the state he’s in: he shares the same history as the Mahatma. The difference is that Mohandas looks the way he does not because of Porbandar — the place where Gandhi was born — or Kathiawar, Rajkot, England, South Africa, or Birla House, but as a result of the hunger and heat, sweat and sickness, insult and injustice in the fields and pastures, caverns and caves, jungles and marshes, of Chhattisgarh and Vindhya Pradesh. Otherwise, all the rest is the same.

I’d also like to stop the story right here and now to solemnly affirm that the similarity of names is honestly and truly just a coincidence. When I sat down to write this, I had no idea these sorts of echoes could possibly be hidden in the story of Mohandas and his family from the village.

You’ll have to take my word, and don’t read too much into it. It isn’t some symbolic story or allegory or coded fable. It’s totally on the level. Though, truth be told, it’s not really a story. As I’m wont to do, I wind up detailing the real life of a real person — someone alive now, living among us in our society — concealing it behind the veil of a story. Mohandas is a living, breathing human being, and his life is at this moment in grave danger. Though you can count on my having played a little fast and loose with the truth, as I always do.

My game, however, is like the game of trying to hide an elephant with a washcloth.

Assume that the elephant is a truth. If a poet or writer tries to hide the animal behind a meagre washcloth, he risks burning his bridges and sinking the boats that ferry him through the journey of life.

Mohandas is real. If you’d like to verify this, you can do so by asking any inhabitant of our village, or any other village in this country.)

Mohandas’s mother and father had high hopes that when he got his BA he would soon find a good job. He’d been married by the age of fifteen to Kasturi, the daughter of Biranju, from Katkona village. She was a hard worker. After arriving at her in-laws’ after the wedding, she immediately began looking after the entire household, even taking on small chores for the neighbours; the money she earned allowed Mohandas to pay his college fees. Everyone was watching Mohandas, the first young man from his caste to get a college degree, and at the top of the class. When the exam results were announced, his photo was published in the local papers. Test prep companies even used his photo in their publicity materials.

Mohandas duly registered with the job office, and sent off application after application for openings he’d found in the classifieds. Time and again he received postcards from the job office. He then studied for the public service exam, working much harder than he’d ever worked as a student.

Mohandas travelled anywhere and everywhere looking for work. Though he’d aced his exams at college, he was never invited back after the job interviews. And then he’d discover the people getting hired were those with barely a high school education, if that, or the ones who had graduated in the middle or bottom of their classes. All of them had some kind of connection: either they were the son-in-law, or son, or nephew, or brown noser, or assistant, to a government officer, politician, or big shot. Mohandas came home after every interview with the feeling his luck was running out, but he didn’t give up hope. He knew full well how corrupt India was — but what about the ten or twenty per cent who found work on the basis on merit and hard work?

He realised after a while that some of the positions were auctioned off to the highest bidder. If his father had had fifty or a hundred thousand rupees, Mohandas could have used that as a bribe to get two or three jobs that had otherwise slipped away.

Time went on. He was now past the age limit for a government position. His family began to lose hope. Still, Kasturi kept up her encouragement: No government work, no problem, you’ll get something in the private sector. Or else pick up a trade. The government has plenty of opportunities nowadays for the out-of-work educated. We’ll raise chickens. We’ll start a brisk business selling eggs. We’ll open a shop to make candles or incense, or a little flourmill. Government banks are giving out loans. One time a literacy job came up; he could have found temporary work as a teacher. But in the end it turned out the government official who was in charge of the program was only hiring people from his own caste or political party; Mohandas was of a different caste, and didn’t belong to any political party.

He was totally straightforward; a bit reserved, and had plenty of self-respect. And, sadly, it simply wasn’t in his power to do as much running around as he would have been required to, kissing the arses of government officers or hakims, bribing them with food and drink. And like the jobs themselves, looking for a job was a bloodsport, full of rivalry. It’s not as if Mohandas was afraid of competition — if he had been, how would he have graduated with honours? But he soon discovered the real world was one massive sports stadium, and the ones who scored goal after goal were those who had the power to cripple the other players. And this power came from criminal, illegal connections and back-door deals, nepotism and nefariousness, bribes and rewards — none of which Mohandas had access to.

It wasn’t just Mohandas, but his whole family that began to let go of the dream of his becoming a government officer or hakim, and with great difficulty began to hope that he would just find some job, any job that would free him from joblessness and emptiness, and at least bring home some money to feed the family. This is when his father, Kaba, was diagnosed with TB. He began wheezing, and coughing up blood. And just a little while later Putlibai’s eyes were ruined by the free eye clinic. On top of all of the housework and small jobs she did to earn money, now Kasturi had become the caretaker for her in-laws. This was also when she was in most need of rest, since she was pregnant — Devdas had arrived in her womb.

Looking at Mohandas, you’d think he’d been sick for a long time. He didn’t visit many people from the village. It also became more and more difficult for him to face his fellow villagers or caste brethren, so he avoided them all. The same question was on everyone’s lips: ‘What’s he up to, and has he sorted out a job yet?

The Kathina river flowed nearby. Like most people from the village, Mohandas planted various melons, cucumbers, and gourds in the summer months on its banks. His wife and parents joined him — they dug irrigation ditches to bring water to the seedlings. They worked in shifts, afternoons and evenings, watching over everything to make sure the digging went smoothly; the crops brought them an extra nine or ten thousand rupees per year. Though a few times the monsoon came at the wrong time, causing the river level to rise; whatever crops had been ready for harvest were washed away by the swelling current. Twice this happened to Mohandas. A dark pessimism began to grow inside.

Mohandas hadn’t come home the night Kasturi gave birth to Devdas. He’d been lying on the wide sandy bank of the Kathina, keeping an eye on the quiet sky above. It happened to be a new moon the night Devdas was born. Kasturi almost didn’t live through the delivery; the umbilical cord got twisted around the infant’s neck, with little Devdas stuck halfway out. Bilspurhin, who’d come to help with the delivery, announced that Kasturi, who’d passed out from fear, was in mortal danger.

Mohandas’s blind mother and coughing father looked everywhere to find their son, but he was nowhere to be found. He was lying on the sandy bank of the Kathina, staring up at the moonless sky like a corpse, searching for some sign of life inside him. The dark black of the new moon night, not blood, flowed through his veins. His gloomy mind couldn’t find sleep, it swarmed with visions of terror that had incubated in the womb of a system thoroughly rotten and corrupt.

Mohandas had probably passed out on the banks of the river that night — otherwise, he would have heard his mother and father calling him, or his wife shrieking, or his newborn son Devdas crying when he was born at four in the morning.

The sun had already risen well into the sky by the time its rays awakened Mohandas, who was lying on the banks of the Kathina one kilometre outside the village, out of his sleep, or swoon.

Mohandas lay still in the sand for a long time as he warmed up. His body was spent, his thoughts scattered. It began to dawn on him that he wasn’t on his balcony or in his courtyard; he was sprawled on the sandy riverbank, where he’d planted cucumbers and melons and loki and tomatoes just a few days ago. But the rains had come too soon, and the river had first swelled, then overflowed, until its ravenous crest had swallowed everything whole.

Mohandas returned home to find quite a crowd from the village assembled; women, too. It seemed they were all talking about him, and the crowd hushed and people scattered as soon as he arrived.

‘It was by the grace of god she pulled through, son. The villagers had already come with the tulsi leaf and said she was nearly dead,’ his mother said, wiping the tears away with a corner of her sari. ‘I swear that baby’s some kind of angel.’

He went into his wife’s little chamber. Kasturi was lying on the cot, sleeping with her baby; moments earlier, she’d been on the brink of death. Smoke from the cow dung cake burning in the borsi pot filled the room, along with the smell of the neem water and musty ajwain. Her eyes barely registered Mohandas’s presence; his heart sank when he saw how exhausted she was, how vulnerable. One more stomach had delivered itself to the house that morning. Arrangements for half a litre of cow’s milk would have to be made daily for nine months. Kasturi would need a diet of turmeric rice, ginger, ghee, and sweet gur for a month. And then he’d have to spend all kinds of money feeding relatives for the birth ceremony, the naming ceremony, the annaprashan milk-and-rice newborn feeding ceremony. And then… his gaze fell on the newborn sleeping against his mother’s side, a hale and hearty, pudgy little fellow, beautiful and innocent, snuggled against her, looking like the offspring of some divine being. Mohandas felt fatherly feelings well up inside for the first time, and he simply couldn’t take his eyes off of the boy.

‘The postman Sitaram’s here and he’s got something for you,’ Kaba called from the balcony.

Mohandas read the letter, from the biggest coal mine in the district, inviting Mohandas for an interview. It’d been more than a few months since he’d received this kind of invitation. Was it possible that while he lay in the sand on the banks of the Kathina his thoughts had produced some kind of sound that reached high up in the sky, finally reaching a celestial body? That a heavenly being perceived his sorrow, his calamitous state? Was the baby Kasturi gave birth to in the wee hours of the morning an angel who would unlock the door to a whole new life for his entire family?

The interview letter sent to by Oriental Coal Mines via the employment agency glowed with the promise of a new beginning. After a long drought, a tender sprout of hope grew once again in Mohandas’s heart. He couldn’t sleep the next night; though he had accepted the fact that his tree of life had been reduced to a dead stump, now it exploded with new shoots.

On the day of his interview, Mohandas arrived one hour early. Invoking the names of his family goddess, Malihamai, and his spiritual guru, Kabirdas, he experienced an unprecedented feeling of self-confidence, hungry for the job no matter what. A one hour written exam would be followed by an hour’s break, followed by the physical test. He dived into the tasks with all his mind and soul. He finished the hour-long exam in less than thirty minutes. The questions were easy, and multiple-choice; he had only to write a check mark next to the correct answer. For the two-hour physical exam they made him run a 1500metre dash, then a sprint, then lift some weights, then crawl on all fours over rough terrain, and finally run five laps around the field. He took an eye exam; they had him identify various colours. He didn’t come in second in any of these performances.

At four in the afternoon, the door opened to the office where the hundred and fifty other job applicants were sitting. The names of the five candidates that had been selected were called out, and Mohandas’s was number one.

His heart beat wildly — the impossible was happening. A quick end to all his life’s uncertainties. Every month, a pay cheque. Every day, a fire in the stove at home, and a hot, steaming curry. Medical treatment for his mother and father. No more need for Kasturi to work like a dog in the homes of others.

The clerk had assembled all of Mohandas’s diplomas and transcripts. Looking over his BA transcript he said, ‘Huh? You haven’t found a job yet? With just a little shoulder to the grindstone and you should’ve been able to find something decent.’

‘How soon can I start?’ Mohandas asked.

‘Consider yourself started. We’ll have all your papers processed by the end of the week at the latest, and then the contract will be sent to your house. At most the whole process will take two weeks.’

It was the dawn of a new era at the home of Mohandas. He had two thousand rupees sitting at the post office, and with it he bought a new mosquito net, a kilo of ghee, sweet gur, dried ginger, a few good pots and pans, new clothes for Kasturi and Devdas. For himself he bought a pair of jeans, a poly blend shirt with a checked pattern, a thirty-rupee wallet, a couple of five-rupee handkerchiefs. He made arrangements with Parasu for a half litre of milk to be delivered each morning. Word spread in the village that, at long last, Mohandas had found an honest-to-goodness job. Villagers who had utterly shunned Mohandas began to be civil, even solicitous. People who’d made fun of his degree and hard work began to sing a different tune.

‘It was just a matter of time. Mohandas couldn’t have sat around empty-handed for very long with his kind of degree.’

And then there were others who made comments like this: ‘You know that bamboo-weaver-whatever caste Mohandas belongs to? They’ve got job quotas for them now too. And he’s the one who got the quota job for his caste since he was the only one of the lot there with a degree.’

And kheer, too, was served for dessert at Mohandas’s home that week, and a delicious potato-tomato curry — and spicy! His mother forgot about her blindness as her fingers felt and groped around the little winnowing basket to pick out the pebbles from the rice and dhal. She even used mustard oil to make a chicken dish with red chili and dried mango powder. Kaba bought a full pack of Mangalore Ganesh bidis and a box of Nai Jahaz-brand matches — a gentle strike, and they lit up like a torch. He sat out on the balcony for many nights, taking long, satisfying puffs on his bidi, singing bhajans in praise of Kabirdas at the top of his lungs. And he didn’t cough once, and there wasn’t any blood in his phlegm.

One morning at the crack of dawn blind Putlibai was nearly pirouetting in the courtyard, singing with all the joy in her heart:

My boy, his wife, they’ve come to settle down

And so has the little bird myna, in the same room, she’s nested ’round

Call it a holy sign, call it a holy sign, and our troubles will wash away

Jai ho to Goddess Maliha! Success and victory and more

Jai ho to Satguru Maharaj! Victory and success to you

The next week Mohandas waited every day for the letter to arrive from the coal mine. But the postman didn’t come. And then the next week, too — no letter. It was going on three weeks, and by then he’d heard that Santosh Kumar Sharma, son of Kanchan Mal Sharma from Kansakora, was the first to receive his papers. Mohandas caught the state bus service to the coal mine, and was told by the same clerk in the recruitment office that the letters were in the process of being sent out. There were, in fact, only three positions for the five men picked; if no more spots opened up, they’d have to strike two candidates from the list. Mohandas was terrified; the clerk saw the disappointment on his face and tried to reassure him by saying that he hoped that two more positions would open up and even if they didn’t Mohandas’s name still wouldn’t be struck from the list since his had been at the very top.

Mohandas went home. The clerk had told him to wait another six weeks, and had tried to sound as convincing as possible, but Mohandas had already lost a little of his verve. He thought about how Parsu would want his money at the end of the month for the daily milk. In all the excitement, he’d borrowed more money; how was he going to pay it back now? Kasturi told him to keep his resolve. Putlibai promised goddess Maliha whatever she wanted if she saw Mohandas through. And, well, Kaba didn’t say very much; the singing stopped and the cough came back.

Six weeks later Mohandas returned to the Oriental Coal Mines. He waited for a long time before the clerk called him into the recruitment office, where again he told him to wait a little longer. This time he didn’t say for how long, and the bonhomie had faded from his demeanor. Before leaving, Mohandas emphasised that he’d be back again in a month to see if there was anything new; indifferently, the clerk replied, ‘Why bother? If you get the letter, you get the letter.’ Then he added, ‘The truth is that the Coal India manager who chose the candidates that day was from Bihar and gave one of the jobs to his son-in-law. These are the kinds of games the higher-ups play.’ A dark pit opened before Mohandas.

The next month Mohandas went again to see if he could find something out — you never know. He was made to wait outside the office from half past ten in the morning until half past three in the afternoon. After pleading and cajoling with the underling, Mohandas was allowed inside the office, only to discover that the other clerk was on vacation, and that the fat clerk filling in for him knew nothing about his file. Mohandas expressed his concern about the whereabouts of his college transcript and other original documents; by way of an answer, the fat clerk asked what in the world they would do with his transcript and certificates, and added that if Mohandas didn’t get the job, the office would return them by registered mail. Otherwise he could come and pick them up himself the next time he came.

Again Mohandas went home. He knew in his heart of hearts that the gods in the skies had truly sensed his disaster, and had therefore showered drops of mercy onto the dead stump of his existence; the ugly burl had wondrously sprouted shoots and buds, about to burst wide open. But the backdraft of corruption and bad luck had burned it all away. Now no hope remained. If he’d had some cash on hand he could have found a middleman to take it to the top, and secure him the position. The rich in the village were the first to get wind of Mohandas’s situation; just as they’d done before, they started making fun of his education and skills. Mohandas had to swallow the bitter pill of humiliation the day he ran into Vijay Tiwari, son of Pandit Chatradhari, with whom he’d studied at college; and who, even though barely managing to graduate — at the bottom of the class at that — had been set up with a job as a police sub-inspector, thanks to his in-laws’ behind-the-scenes deals. He summoned Mohandas.

‘Moe-huh-naaa! Mo-ha-na! Just the other day I bought three water buffalo as part of a government sponsored program. You see, I’m going to start a dairy. If you play your cards right, you and dear Kasturi can tend to the buffalo, feed them, look after them. You’ll get paid on the first of the month, and I’ll get your house fixed up through the Indira Awas program. And that sweetheart Kasturi shall have a good time in our milk dairy!’

‘Let me think it over,’ Mohandas replied, concealing the insult oozing inside. Hearing the name of Kasturi emerge from Vijay Tiwari’s mouth deepened his feelings of impotence, and gave rise to a new, formless fear. If something weren’t done, and fast, his family would break open and shatter into a thousand pieces. He had to come up with something, anything that was within his power, and something that didn’t require anyone else’s help or connections. Swirling around him were images of Kasturi’s lovely face and Vijay Tiwari’s cunning stare.

He decided then and there that he wouldn’t go back to the Oriental Coal Mines to find out what happened to his diploma, transcript, and the rest of his certificates. Why should he? They weren’t even worth the paper they were printed on. He and people like him didn’t have whatever it was that it took to secure jobs, or to get their hands in the cookie jar of government project funds.

After dinner that night, Mohandas didn’t sleep. He gathered seedlings and a spade, slung everything over his shoulder, told Kasturi he’d be back in the morning, and set off for the banks of the Kathina, and, once there, worked like a spirit possessed to dig irrigation channels for the seedlings of muskmelon, cucumber, watermelon, tomato, and eggplant. At around four thirty in the morning, when all the other stars, one after another, began to fade, but the North Star was still shining with all its lustre, Mohandas wiped the sweat from his forehead and chest and slowly began wading into the waters of the Kathina. Dipping his cupped hands in the water, he scooped the water back over his head, placed his flat palms together in supplication, and said with great emotion, ‘Just please don’t wash away the little plants, Kathinamai. Have mercy on Malihamai, have mercy on my son Devdas. Please don’t gobble up all the crops I planted from the sweat of my brow! Because if you do I’ll jump right in, height of the monsoon, with my kids and all, and fill your stomach with us!’

Tears from his eyes dripped down from his face to swim in the Kathina, where tiny kothari fish swam to the surface and fought to nip at the salt from his teardrops, while Mohandas emerged from the river with Kabirdas’s name on his lips.

When Mohandas got home he found Kasturi busy plastering the courtyard with cowdung, Putlibai sorting by touch the seeds of the muskmelon, cucumber, watermelon in her winnowing basket, Kaba, who had found some shade in the corner, engrossed in husking the bamboo, and eighteen-month-old baby Devdas in his own little world sitting in the middle of the courtyard playing an innocent game of chopping grass with a little cutting tool.

Hearing the sound of his footsteps, Putlibai looked up with her sightless eyes and met Mohandas’s with a smile. ‘Did you hear, Mohana, that mama myna gave birth to two chicks in the myna nest?’

If she’d been able to see she would have been happy to note the look of joy that shone on Mohandas’s face when he heard the news.

After supper that night Mohandas took Devdas and Kasturi with him down to the Kathina. Kasturi had collected all the seeds and kept them safe in the folds of the sari at her waist, and had hoisted Devdas firmly on her shoulders. Long-grass rope, a spade, and trowel were slung over Mohandas’s shoulders.

A few little breaths of the cool river air, and it wasn’t long before Devdas was off in a deep sleeping reverie. Kasturi and Mohandas got to work filling the seedling holes he’d dug with the cow dung fertiliser and planting the various seedlings for the fruits and vegetables. It took two hours before the work was completed. Kasturi brought water from the Kathina in a ghari pot and sprinkled it over the seedbeds; Mohandas was transfixed by her beauty under the twinkling starlight. In the waning moonlight, Kasturi’s dusky body looked just like the old stone statues that lay outside the little temple of Malihamai, the ones brought after their excavation from Benheru talab. Kasturi matched those beautiful bodies — her waist, arms, breasts, legs — as if a sculptor had spent years doing nothing but carefully chiselling her form.

It was well past midnight; they could hear the occasional sandpiper or pankukri. All Mohandas could smell was the scent of the sweat on Kasturi’s body, mixed with the heaviness of the river air. What sort of dreams did she have when she married him — and then how did things turn out? From morning ’til night, day in and day out, without fail, good times or bad, healthy or sick, whether food was on the table or not, she was there, standing beside Mohandas. He felt a deep bond with her, utterly intimate, and he couldn’t stop staring. She placed the clay jar down on the sand, stood up, and began braiding her hair. Mohandas approached; she was silent.

‘Fancy a game of kabaddi?’ Mohandas suggested with a little smile. ‘Hu, Tu, Tu, it’s like wrestling!’

He grabbed hold of her arm, and began tickling her stomach and armpits. She tried to squirm away, ‘Arré, arré, you’ll wake up Devdas, what are you doing? Pleasestop pleasestop pleasestop!’ When she realised Mohandas wasn’t about to let go, she gave him a little push, broke free and ran toward the river. She leapt like a mad doe, suddenly free, running beneath the hazy, dimming light of the celestial bodies in the sky that shone on the sandy bank that stretched off as far as the eye could see.

‘C’mon and catch me if you c-a-a-a-a-n-n-n! And if you do, I’ll know you can and more, ’ she teased, her voice trailing off as she ran far into the distance, her shadow vanishing.

‘Hu, tu, tu, I’m coming after you!’ Mohandas said as he set off at a sprint toward her.

Kasturi quickened her pace, but Mohandas was catching up. As she ran faster, giving it all she had, her feet splashed water on the riverbanks. ‘C’mon and catch me if you c-a-a-a-a-n-n-n!’ She was getting winded. Mohandas’s ‘Hu, tu, tu, I’m coming after you!’ grew closer with every second. She realised she wasn’t going to be able to get away, but nonetheless gave it one more go — and just as she was picking up speed, Mohandas managed to catch up with one great leap and grab hold of her; they plunged into the waters. ‘Lemmego! Lemmego!’ she said trying to fend him off, splashing him with water, but Mohandas just held on tighter. His breath and her breath commingled in the wet river air. He tickled her as before, this time yielding great laughter. She dropped her false resistance, and in the middle of pushing him away, her body slid up right to his, like iron to a magnet.

He flipped her down onto the shallow riverbed and slid atop her. ‘My sweet little beauty!’ And he began to kiss her. They flopped and splashed, unbound in the cool waters of the Kathina, as if they were two young fish, maybe a gonch or padhit, frolicking under the hazy, flickering stars in that hot monsoon midnight. Occasionally a sweet scream of delight emerged from deep in Kasturi’s bosom, piercing the night’s stillness, and mixed with Mohandas’s heavily breathed ‘Hu, tu, tu tuuuuu!’

An exhausted Kasturi emerged from the water and fell asleep in her soaking wet sari, Devdas at her side. As for Mohandas, he remained lying in the shallow waters of the Kathina river for who knows how many hours, eyes fixed on the gods in the sky, and singing:

Birds are singing, chirp chirp!

Chirp chirp but where is my sweet lover?

My lover in this cherry blossom season?

Wild cherry where have you gone?

How to tell my cherry I am ready but not yet ripe?

Mohandas had such a sweet singing voice that night that the lapwings and pankukris in the far-away distance heard his song and joined in.

That night would later be remembered as the beginning of Sharda.

It was a good year for muskmelon and watermelon and vegetables in general, but the price remained low at the market, and there wasn’t any real profit to be had. Again Kasturi was pregnant and had to take on more work, while Mohandas toiled like an animal. While that one time the Kathina had heeded his prayers, afterward its waters often crested high, its current gobbling up a month’s worth of Mohandas’s labor. Kaba’s cough began to worsen, but Mohandas met an excellent doctor, Dr Wakankar, who worked six miles away at the government hospital in the neighbouring village, and explained that TB drugs were available free in the hospital, and that his father should get the full course of medicine. The doctor gave him a plastic bag with a full two months’ worth of the drug. But Kaba wasn’t capable by himself of taking the medications on time, and he didn’t take his meals or eat according to any sort of normal schedule. Dr Wakankar also told Mohandas that his mother could have an operation done that would restore some of her eyesight, but it would run to at least ten thousand. He gave his word to Mohandas that if ever an honest district collector came to the area, he’d arrange the operation; but years passed without an honest district collector coming to the area. In the meantime, a young man and woman from an NGO started visiting their weaver-caste neighbourhood, and made all sorts of promises about some project that would greatly increase their quality of life. The two youths filled out a bunch of forms, and had Mohandas sign them. But then the visits stopped; later they found out that the two had got married and gone to Delhi. She was working for a TV channel and, thanks to an uncle of his, he’d been set up with a cushy IAS job in a slum development, and was now opening his own foundation, taking trips crisscrossing India and the globe.

Time marched on with Mohandas and Kasturi somehow managing to survive by the grace of Malihamai and their own hard work. Sharda was two, Devdas four. Kaba now spent most of his time stretched out on the cot. Sometimes he’d help make some long-grass rope or husk the bamboo. But his cough got worse and worse, and he was so skinny you could count his ribs. Sometimes it seemed as if he were spewing chunks of his own flesh mixed with the blood. And meanwhile some bigwigs had found a way to have Dr Wakankar transferred to some other district, leaving no one in the hospital who would provide the TB drugs free of charge. Whenever Mohandas went to inquire, he was told to come back next week. Kaba had weakened to the extent that he just lay on the cot staring silently at the ground after each fit of coughing. Insects began to recognise the sound of his hack. Yellow and black ants set off in droves the moment his spit hit the spot next to his bed where he spat. A swarm of horseflies attacked the moment he coughed, nearly giving Kaba a heart attack, and it looked like the end was near. He tried calling out for Putlibai, but was seized in a coughing fit before he could get the words out; finally, he ended up filling his cupped hands with a mass of spit and blood and tissue. Mohandas and Kasturi had been gone for a while looking after the plantings at the river’s edge, and blind Putlibai was the only one at home. She went tripping and scrambling to Kaba’s side, began touching her husband’s body all over, crying. Rheumatism had stiffened her joints over the past year. Kaba lay absolutely still. After a little while after his breathing steadied he began to chastise Putlibai.

‘Hey blindy, why all the tears? I’m not about to kick the bucket yet. First I am going to attend Devdas’s wedding, then send Sharda off to her new husband. After that, I can die. Stop crying!’

He touched his hand to his wife’s head.

‘Bring me the whittler and some bamboo.’

***

(Let’s stop here for a minute. I bet you’re thinking that I’m taking advantage of the one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary of the birth of Premchand, the King of Hindi Fiction, to spin you some hundred-and- twenty- five-year-old story dressed up as a tale of today. But the truth is that the account I am putting before you, in its old and backward style, manner, and language, is a tale of a time right after 9/11, in the aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York; a time when two sovereign Asian nations were reduced to ash and rubble. It’s a tale of a time when anybody worshipping any gods other than the god of the US and Europe were called fascists, terrorists, religious fanatics. Gas and oil, water, markets, profit, plunder: to get all of this, companies, governments, and armies were killing innocent people every day all over the world.

A time when, if you looked closely, you’d notice that everyone in power was a clone of one another, when everyone was consuming the same brands, drinking the same drinks, eating the same foods, driving the same cars made by the same car companies, bank account in the same kinds of banks. Everyone had the same kind of ATM card in their pocket and same mobile phone in their hands. They got drunk on the same booze, and you could see them on page three of the newspaper on any of the TV channels from 1 to 70, soused, naked, outrageous. Look closely and you’ll notice they all have the same skin tone and speak the same language.)

***

The colour was totally washed out of Mohandas’s blue jeans and checked shirt, and both were covered with patches Kasturi had sewn on. Kaba left his bed only if he had to answer the call of nature, but otherwise slept day and night, coughing and spitting up phlegm. Putlibai groaned incessantly from the pain of her rheumatism. And yet when they were in the presence of their grandchildren, Devdas and Sharda, the rickety frames of grandmother and grandfather overflowed with life and tenderness and devotion to the little ones. Devdas jumped up and down on his baba Kaba’s cot while little Sharda stubbornly stuck to her aaji Putlibai’s lap and horsed around.

That day Mohandas and Kasturi were busy weaving bamboo mats, bamboo pith helmets, and little purses woven from bamboo. They’d received such an enormous order from Vindhyachal Handicrafts — Mohanlal Marwari’s shop — that for the past ten or twelve weeks they’d done nothing but try to finish it. Kaba and Putli looked after the children. The order was for fifty mats, fifty hats, and thirty purses. Kaba got up from his cot when his cough wasn’t rendering him immobile and helped husk the bamboo; it was an ancient craft, and he had a lot of experience. Kasturi wove the mats as if her fingers were working a machine. Four-and-a-half year old Devdas had put a hat over his head and with a bamboo stick in hand was driving two-year-old Sharda as if she were a goat, shouting, ‘hurry up, get along!’; wee Sharda in turn crawled on all fours as best she could from one corner of the room to the other. Just then there was a knock on the door. It was Kasturi’s brother-in-law, Gopaldas, who, leaning his bike against the wall, came inside. He worked as a saw operator at Narmada Timber and Furniture at the bazaar, and the owner also sent him on errands to collect various small debts.

Kasturi was delighted to see Gopaldas. It had been a long time since a visitor had come from a village near her home. After offering him something to drink and sharing a smoke, Gopal told Mohandas that he’d been at the Oriental Coal Mines three days ago on business. While there, he found out that Bisnath from Bichiya Tola had been working there under the name of Mohandas for the past five years as deputy depot supervisor, earning more than ten thousand a month. Gopaldas also found out that Bisnath’s father Nagendranath had gone to the clerk in the recruitment office and wrangled Mohandas’s employment letter out of him, then given it to his wayward son. Bisnath took advantage of the fact that the transcripts and diploma Mohandas had brought at the time of his interview didn’t have his photos on them, so he presented himself as Mohandas, and put his own photos where Mohandas’s photos would have been, then went to court and had all the documents notarised by the gazetted officer. Bisnath had transformed himself into Mohandas, son of Kabadas, caste Kabirpanthi Vishwakarma, and was taking home ten thousand a month as deputy depot supervisor, a position he filled with great confidence.

Gopaldas had seen Bisnath near the mine at a food stall drinking chai. He saw the plastic ID card hanging around his neck: it was Mohandas’s name, but Bisnath’s photo. And on top of that, everyone drinking chai with him was calling him ‘Mohandas.’

What’s more, Bisnath had left his home in Bichiya Tola village four years ago and had moved with his entire family to the workers quarters, called Lenin Nagar, where his wife made more than a few rupees with her own small time loan sharking; she also ran a shady chit fund. It was bizarre how all Bisnath’s fellow workers called him ‘Mohandas’ and his wife Amita ‘Kasturi Madam.’ Bisnath had not, like Mohandas, earned a BA, but rather was a tenth-grade drop-out; so rather than doing any work in the mine, he spent his time arse-kissing managers, skimming whatever coal he could, and busying himself with union politics.

Mohandas’s mind was spinning as he heard what his brother-in-law was telling him. How could this happen? Even if the world’s turned upside-down, how can one man become another? And like this, out in the open, in broad daylight? And not just for the afternoon, temporarily, but for four whole years? And yet, in his poverty and powerlessness, Mohandas — given the days that he’d seen and the old stories he’d heard from Kaba about his own life — began to feel as if the officers and the hakims and the wealthy and the party members were so powerful, they could turn anything into anything: a dog into an ox, a pig into a lion, a ditch into a mountain, a thief into a gentleman. Mohandas could hardly catch his breath. O guru, what kind of time are we living in when not one person in four long years has been able to step forward and say that the man working at the Oriental Coal Mines who calls himself Mohandas and earns ten thousand a month isn’t Mohandas, but Bisnath; that his father isn’t Kaba, he’s Nagendranath, his wife isn’t Kasturi, it’s Amita Bhardwaj, his mother isn’t Putlibai, but Renukadevi, who isn’t from Purbanra village, but lives in Bichiya Tola? Who doesn’t have a BA, but who dropped out of tenth grade?

Mohandas lost focus that day and kept stopping weaving the mats. His gaze wandered off and he became lost in thought. His hands slipped as he wove the bamboo, and he nearly cut his thumb with the sickle. Katuri kept an eye on him the whole time, knowing exactly the kind of roiling was going on inside. She took the knife from his hand and said, ‘The sun’s a bit much today, why don’t you wash up and have a rest?’

The next morning Mohandas caught the seven o’clock bus and set off for the Oriental Coal Mines. The night before he couldn’t sleep. The bus arrived at the mine at half past ten.

Who could he go talk to? That was the first problem. He didn’t know anyone. On top of that, the way he looked would make it hard for people to believe that he was the real Mohandas who’d graduated with a BA at the top of his class at M.G. College, and whose photo just a few years ago was in the newspaper. Another problem was that he didn’t have any copies of the newspaper, and therefore wouldn’t be able to point to the photo and say, ‘Look, that’s me, Mohandas, son of Kabadas, resident of Purbanra, district Annuppur, Madhya Pradesh, the one who a few years ago got his BA at M.G. Degree College, the one who graduated at the top of his class and was number two in merit. See the resemblance? It’s me, Mohandas!’

It wasn’t easy, but Mohandas managed to sneak in through the gate and into the company compound. His jeans were torn at the knee, and were beginning to rip at the back, too, but Kasturi had patched those bits up with matching colours she’d used from scraps of fabric from a sari top or bedcover. Exposure to the elements and heat and cold and hunger and hard work had turned his skin a dark copper. Sorrow and calamity had scored his face with so many wrinkles that no one would ever believe he was younger than forty. Enduring want and quietly eating insult and injury had made the hair on his head and all over his body a little greyer. Mohandas was in his early thirties but looked as if he was in his fifties.

Mohandas stood in front of the same office where, four years ago, he’d brought his diploma and certificates, and where the employment clerk assured him that his name could never be crossed off the list since he’d had the highest marks for both the written and physical exams.

And sitting in the very same office was the very same clerk. He had a bigger chair now and a bigger desk in front of him to match; the air conditioner behind his desk provided him with a constant cool breeze. Mohandas stood in the doorway watching him busily eating tea biscuits and drinking chai, while two people sat in front of his desk chatting with him, as if they had all the time in the world.

At once the clerk noticed Mohandas, who quickly pressed his hands into a namaskar, and smiled a big smile with the hope that it’d jog the clerk’s memory. But the clerk looked put out — maybe he didn’t recognise Mohandas? He tried again, joined his hands again into a namaste and said brightly, ‘Sir, it’s Mohandas…!’ But by then the clerk had pressed the button beneath his desk that rang the bell. It had a hard clanging ring, and the underling appeared immediately. Mohandas couldn’t make out exactly what the clerk said to him, but they were clearly words of scolding. He emerged from the room, drew the curtain, and looked Mohandas over from head to toe with a scowl. ‘What business do you have here? Go sit on the bench outside. How the devil did you get in here?’ Mohandas wanted to tell the clerk that his name was Mohandas, and that four years ago he’d been offered a job here at the coal mine, and that all of his papers were sitting in that office, but then what happened was that some other man stole his name and stole the job… But Mohandas’s voice was too feeble, and the underling manhandled him over to the bench, and his utterances made no sense. There was a lump in his throat and he was stammering. Breaking free with one of his arms from the underling’s grip he managed to spit out, ‘ Dada, I need to see that clerk, just for a minute to pick up my papers and transcript.’

The underling more or less pushed him over onto the wooden bench that sat against the wall, turned around, and went back. Mohandas knew that he’d never be allowed back in; this was his last chance. He called after the man, who was just about to disappear inside the employment office.

‘Hey! HEY! Go tell that clerk that Mohandas, BA, is here, and he wants all the papers and certificates back he deposited here on 18 August 1997. What a bungle! Give you a nice room and big chair and then it’s nothing but anarchy? Grab a piece of paper, take down my name. Then go show it to your boss!’

The underling’s jaw dropped. Here was a guy dressed in rags who looked like a hobo, yet the language that came out of his mouth was quite lucid, even eloquent, and his manner equal to a educated manager, or clerk’s.

The man remained planted in the doorway and just stared at Mohandas: his washed-out, patched-up jeans; his mended, dirty checked shirt; his balding head, hair that’d turned half-grey; his lustreless, burnt-copper face, criss-crossed with crooked wrinkles; deep-set eyes, gloomy and weak, as if they were seeing a reflection of themselves; his cheap sandals stuck to his feet, their ancient rubber molested by penury and despair, now turned into dirt and wood and paper.

‘You son-of-a-bitch!’ the angry underling muttered under his breath. ‘You crazy bastard! Hey motherfucker, you think the big man will help your beggar butt?’

Mohandas surmised that the underling didn’t really believe what he was saying, even though god himself knew it was all true, so he stood up from the bench and walked toward the man with sure steps, maybe even with a little swagger. He had in mind that he would go in and try to explain that it wasn’t just that Bisnath had taken him for a ride, but had played the entire Oriental Coal Mines for a fool.

The way Mohandas was striding toward him, the impatience and swiftness, the taut wrinkles on his face that mirrored the distress in his mind, his deep-set eyes radiating an agitation, his dry, crusted, quivering lips, and the extreme upset in his words: the underling was scared out of his wits.

‘Whoa! Whoa! OK! One more step and you’re out the door! Stop right there, old man, stop, STOP!’

‘B-B-Buddy! Brother! Just hear me out…’ Mohandas said, a little on the loud side, trying to calm things down a little. But there was too much desperation and not enough supplication in his voice, and things got worse. The man straightened his back and screamed, ‘Get out! Stop right where you are or I’ll rip you a new hole, old man! One more step and out on your arse!’

Hearing the shouting and screaming, four or five guys emerged from the office. They were dressed like higher-ups, and gave Mohandas the hard once-over.

‘Who is this? How’d he get in here?’

‘Where’s security officer Pandey? He chews tobacco and sleeps on the job!’

‘Who’s on guard today at the main gate? Show me the log!’

‘Get him out of here!’

‘Isn’t this peachy? Any old fart could sneak in, take out a gun and start shooting — bang! bang! — and then what? Set off a bomb maybe!’

‘Hand ‘em over to the police! Sharmaji, call the police, dial 1-0-0 on your mobile!’

Nobody was listening to Mohandas; he was just being pushed around in a shower of slaps, fists, and elbows raining on his head, back, shoulders, and face. Mohandas covered his head with his hands to protect his eyes, ‘Please! Just hear me out, hey, stop hitting me, hey!’

Meanwhile, a small group of guards had come running. One was carrying a twelve gauge double-barrelled shotgun, the kind bank guards carry. The rest had batons. Shivers went up Mohandas’s spine; stars from the new moon night on the banks of the Kathina flashed before his eyes, the celestial bodies screaming and groaning, then falling like shooting stars, breaking into pieces. A hard blow struck him unannounced and he let out a scream that sounded like a bound pig getting its throat slit. The sound reached the coal miners, who came out and gathered to watch the show.

(Pay attention, this story takes place at the same time as when that all-seeing Hindi guru was doing you-know-what to a woman in his ascetic quarters, and, thousands of miles and a few oceans away, the US president was sitting in a chair in the White House doing the same thing. When latter-day sea pirates dragged a descendant of Gilgamesh out from a hole near the Tigris and Euphrates where he’d hidden for his life, shining a flashlight in his mouth, counting his teeth, looking for a cyanide pill.

It was the time when the amount of power someone had was, by the law of a kind of backward ratio, equalled by the same degree to which that person had become out of control, violent, barbarous, hellishly immoral. And the same force applied to states, political organisations, castes, religious organisations, and individuals.)

Mohandas stood outside the main gate of the Oriental Coal Mines in the middle of the road. He’d simply stopped thinking. A frightful near-silence buzzed all around. He didn’t realise he was standing in the middle of the street with trucks, Tempos, and cars honking their horns and whizzing by. He still had that thirty-rupee wallet in his pocket that he’d bought when he thought the job was his. In it was one hundred and seventy rupees, all from his labour and toil — this is what he had left, minus the sixty-five for his bus fare. Finding his wallet still there when he reached into his pocket, his mind eased a bit. He suddenly felt the sun’s heat and moved quickly to the side of the road. He was hungry.

While eating at the Fatso’s Vaishnava Pure Vegetarian Food Stall he found out that although there were two state transport buses only one private line had an evening service to the area near his village, Purbanra. He decided to take a look around Lenin Nagar, the coal miners’ colony. He might see someone he knew, maybe someone he studied with at college, maybe someone else.

He lost his way in Lenin Nagar. It was afternoon, all of the apartment buildings looked alike, and everyone was at work in the mines. Only women and children were at home. A school bus was making stops and unloading schoolchildren who were walking on ahead. Lenin Nagar was an enormous residential colony. If I hadn’t had the wool pulled over my eyes and been played for a fool, Mohandas thought, I would have been living in one of these flats with my family, bringing home a pay cheque; Devdas and Sharda would have been going to school wearing little uniforms and shoes and socks and getting off the school bus. We’d have a fan or cooler to help us sleep at night. But how totally ludicrous that in order to find out where Bisnath’s flat was, he’d have to ask for his own name.

‘Hi there friend, can you tell me where Mohandas lives?’

‘Who? You mean supervisor sahib?’

‘That’s the one!’

‘Go straight ahead, make a left at the fourth bylane, it’s the third house, A/11, next to Dr Janardan Singh’s flat.

The door to the apartment was closed. The brass plate affixed to the wall outside read, ‘Mohandas Viswakarma, Deputy Depot Supervisor, Oriental Coal Mines.’

He stood reading that for a little while before ringing the doorbell below the brass plate. The sound gave him a start since the hard ring was identical to the clerk’s desk buzzer, the one that caused calamity.

A fourteen-or fifteen-year-old boy answered the door.

‘Sahib’s not at home, he just left for the market to go drink a lassi,’ the boy said in one breath.

‘Could I have a glass of water?’

Mohandas was very thirsty, the hot sun had been beating down on him, and the wind blew like a furnace. He was wilting. He’d been nicked and bruised on his face, arm, and back during his beating and subsequent ejection from the office compound, and the dried sweat was coagulating the blood in the cuts.

The boy looked him over head to toe.

‘Wait here, I’ll be right back.’ He went inside.

Mohandas gulped down three glasses; the boy’d brought a cold bottle of water from the fridge. The water rejuvenated his body, brought the light back to his eyes, and calmed him. He noticed the boy’s sympathetic look as he took the glass back.

‘Who else is at home?’ Mohandas asked.

‘Nobody. Just Kasturi madamji. But she’s sleeping. Come back after five.’ When the boy started back in with the empty bottle, Mohandas said, ‘When sahib comes back tell him that Mohandas from Purbanra village stopped by. I’ll come back this evening.’

The boy stopped. He looked quizzically at Mohandas. ‘Who? Who should I say stopped by?’

‘Mohandas!’ Mohandas said a little louder, before slowly returning to the May inferno and the nearly melting pavement.

There wasn’t much to Lenin Nagar market, though it ached for a modern makeover. There were a handful of dry-goods stores, a few convenience shops with some groceries. A Kaveri Fast Food that served dosas-idlis-vadas. Two food shacks with the usual tandoori, dhal makhini, kadhai paneer, butter chicken, aloo paratha. A liquor shop with whisky and local toddy with a sign outside that read, ‘Cold Beer Available.’ Two cigarette and paan stalls, and two stores with proper glass window displays that carried all sorts of plastic stuff, small electric appliances and electronics. Then another cavernous apparel store with a show window featuring crude foam mannequins modeling lacy bras and underwear that showed off everything.

Mohandas saw a police Tata Sumo parked in front of Lakshmi Vaishnav Restaurant, and among the handful of police inside drinking lassis was Vijay Tiwari from Mohandas’s village, son of Pandit Chatradhari Tiwari, who’d been fixed up with a police inspector position by his in-laws.

Bisnath, too, was there.

Bisnath was having a good laugh at something as he finished his lassi; walking back toward the Sumo, Mohandas caught his eye. Bisnath did a double take, and for a moment the colour drained from his face. The laugh evaporated. Vijay Tiwari saw the panic on Bisnath’s face and turned around to look; he was sitting in the driver’s seat in full uniform.

Mohandas stood about fifteen yards away, beneath the lamppost, dressed in rags, scorched by the scalding wind.

A tense silence settled over the hot, sunny afternoon.

Bisnath climbed into the SUV. Vijay Tiwari started the engine and floored it, right at a terrified Mohandas, who stumbled to take cover behind a lamppost. Vijay Tiwari hit the brakes hard and the car ground to a halt right beside Mohandas; if it hadn’t, the car would have smashed into Mohandas and the lamppost. He was in a daze.

‘Get over here!’ Vijay Tiwari called him over.

Not even eight years had passed since the very same Vijay Tiwari had studied with Mohandas at the M.G. Degree College. They had a class together and saw each other there every day. He’d been a bit slow in his studies. His father Pandit Chatradhari had held out Mohandas as a role model, since every year he was at the top of the class. Now the same Vijay Tiwari wore a police uniform, rode in a Tata Sumo fitted with cop sirens and a bullhorn, and put on a show: more than simply pretending he didn’t know Mohandas, he put on a show of hostility and scorn. And why? Just because Mohandas was poor, low-caste? Or because he didn’t have a job and was labouring quietly to support his family? Or maybe because these people had swindled him, walked all over what was rightfully his. But now, his presence threw a wrench into their freedom and carousing.

‘You’re lucky that lamppost was there otherwise you would’ve been dead meat!’ Vijay Tiwari spat out.

‘Eh, leave him be,’ Bisnath said. ‘It’s not worth the mess just to swat a fly. And you, arsehole, had better not show your face around here again.’

Mohandas hadn’t budged an inch from his spot.

Vijay Tiwari leant on the horn few times, and then flipped a switch to the bullhorn mounted on the roof of the SUV.

‘Hey Bisnath!’ the sound screamed from the loudspeaker. ‘Have you lost your mind, Bisnath? Oh, Bisnath, what’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? Gone deaf? BISNATH! Hey, Bisnath!’

They exploded into laughter inside the car.

‘You didn’t bring your wife with you, Bisnath? You came to die alone? Tsk, tsk.’

Bisnath climbed out of the car and went right up to Mohandas. He reached inside his pocket, took out a five hundred, and stuffed it into Mohandas’s.

‘From now on forget about your old name, and from now on don’t even take a step toward Lenin Nagar. Today you got lucky. We were just drinking lassis. The lamppost saved your butt, otherwise you would’ve been a grease spot. If we ever see you around here again, it’s into the coal furnace, and out as ash!’ Then he turned towards Fatso’s Vegetarian Restaurant and shouted, ‘Nand Kishore! Hey! Can you bring a lassi to Bisnath over here? And make it cold, put some ice in it! It’s Bisnath, from the next village over!’ More laughter from inside the SUV.

Bisnath joined in, and while getting back into the car, whispered to Vijay Tiwari, ‘Nand Kishore? Just a dhimar from Bhakhar who turned himself into a Brahmin after he came here and now runs a Vashniva vegetarian restaurant. Even married a brahmin girl from Sajanpur, the little weasel. Call him ‘panditji’ and he loves it, gets all swelled up with pride.’

‘That’s good! And so the brotherhood enlarges.’ Vijay Tiwari chuckled at himself and turned to the food joint. ‘Keep an eye on Bisnath, Panditji, and thanks for giving him a lassi to drink, and put it on my tab, and, oh, he’s just a little off his rocker.’

‘Don’t worry yourself about it! Not one bit! All in a day’s work! I’ll put him back on his rocker!’

The Tata Sumo sped off, leaving Mohandas covered in a cloud of dust and exhaust.

He stood perfectly still, grabbing hold of the lamppost. Was this some movie where a scene had just wrapped up, and he was a character trapped inside? Or was it some twisted nightmare?

Fatty’s Vaishnav Vegetarian Foodstop’s light-skinned, beady eyed, middle-aged fat sweetmeat proprietor, Nand Kishore, held out a glass of lassi.

‘Bisnath, oh Bisnath! Come and drink your lassi!’

Mohandas was leaving Lenin Nagar market and walking to the bus stand when he noticed a disturbed-looking man coming toward him. A little bag was slung over his shoulder, his pants were washed out, and coming apart at the seams. He came up to Mohandas and stopped.

‘Do you know where Suryakant’s flat is in Lenin Nagar, brother?’

Mohandas remembered seeing that name on a nameplate when he’d been looking for Bisnath’s house. He tried to remember.

‘Keep going straight ahead and you’ll see Matiyani Chowk at the big intersection, and ask someone, it’s not far from there.

The man started to leave and Mohandas asked him softly, ‘Whose apartment are you looking for?’

‘Suryakant’s! From a village near Unnao.’

‘What’s the name of his village?’

‘Gadhakola!’

‘And what’s your name’

The man hesitated. His lips trembled, his deep-set eyes began to well up, and in a thin, gravelly tone, a rough sound emerged.

‘Suryakant! I’m Suryakant from Gakhakola!’

And with that he turned and shuffled toward Lenin Nagar.

***

(It’s a story that takes place at the time when every government of every country on earth was promoting the same economic policies and playing the same political games, and when even the biggest billboard in the world can’t cover up the massive chasm that has opened up between rich and poor.

It’s the time when the revolutionary forces of the exploited and downtrodden from the early twentieth century were busy playing a game of chess to form coalition governments, lower the price of gas, and tighten their rule over the poor. And the time when a groundbreaking, historic consensus emerged among all parties in this twenty-first century postmodern democracy to cripple and crush all of the decent people of this country, the ones who get by with hard work and talent. Politics assumed the form of any means of power that’s used to exercise control, perpetrate injustice, and oppress the citizenry.)

***

Mohandas returned home at eleven. Everyone had been eagerly awaiting his return. Kasturi had made rice, dhal, and an okra khuthima. She’d also stone-ground some green mango chutney.

Devdas and Sharda had already eaten and were asleep. Kaba was lying on the cot in the courtyard coughing away. ‘Three times today he’s spat up gobs of lung with the blood,’ Kasturi informed him. Putlibai was sleeping next to him on the rug spread out on the floor beside the cot. Kasturi had waited to take her meal and still hadn’t eaten; she ladled out his food and hers, then covered them with a lid.

Mohandas took off his clothes and wrapped himself in an angocha in order to wash up before eating; all the cuts and bruises were visible. The marks gave Kasturi a fright.

‘What happened? Where did all those cuts come from?’ she said, carefully examining his body with her hands. ‘My god! These aren’t just little scratches.’ Mohandas quietly washed his hands and face, the cool water rinsing off the fatigue of the day, refreshing his whole body. Next to the washbasin was a good-sized jasmine plant in full flower; its scent filled the courtyard. He drew in a deep breath, filling his lungs with the sweet smell, closed his eyes for a moment, and incanted the name of his satguru, Kabir.

Kasturi removed the cover from the thali, releasing the smell of the rice into the courtyard. It was lohandi, an old stash Putlibai had put in the back of their rice bin and forgotten about, until today, when, remembering it, she groped around until she found the little bundle. Mohandas ate it with relish, and his fingers were covered in the mango chutney.

‘The bisaindhi mango tree’s bursting with fruit. We should get at least a couple of thousand for them, should I go pick and sell ‘em tomorrow?’ Mohandas said, before letting out a big burp to signal his satiety. ‘You must do some kind of magic to make food taste as good as this! Mix together your mango chutney, rice and a good appetite, and that’s what I call heaven!’

Kasturi’s eyes welled up a little. She knew that another calamity had befallen Mohandas that day, one he’d keep hidden from her forever.

That night Kasturi instantly fell asleep after a long day and late night, but sleep didn’t come to Mohandas for a while. He kept getting up, downing glass after glass of water. Some sort of storm was swirling around in his head, a terrible typhoon of disquiet.

Mohandas went to the Oriental Coal Mines once or twice more, but the trips turned out to be pointless since a rumour had been spread throughout Lenin Nagar that some loony popped up every couple of weeks claiming that he was the real depot supervisor, Mohandas, BA. Call him Bisnath and watch him go mad and say all sorts of crazy stuff.

He’d been defeated; Mohandas gave up on going to the coal mine. Day and night, he couldn’t calm down. He stayed up all night by the sandy bank of the Kathina, quietly regarding the stars. In the village, Kabirpanthis were considered merely a low weaver or thatcher caste. Were they a scheduled caste or an adivasi or an aboriginal group? It was still unclear, according to the official government gazette. After the census ten years ago ‘bamboo cutter’ was tacked on to their caste description; on other papers ‘Hindu’ was indicated as their religion and ‘Indian’ for nationality. Their numbers were small, and none of them took any significant part in any of the political parties, never mind holding any government positions; so here too Mohandas became the butt of many jokes. The high-casters and rich folk asked him in passing, ‘So, how’s the job hunt going, Moh-hun-ah?’

‘Take the job of looking after Vijay Tiwari’s water buffalo,’ someone advised him. ‘At least you won’t have to worry about putting a little bread on your plate. Make Kasturi happy, too. She wouldn’t have to walk around barefoot.’

Others told him he should go visit Bisnath in Lenin Nagar, throw himself at his feet and offer to be his servant. Mohandas began to avoid the higher-ups of his village. He’d see them and get lost fast.

But it’s not as if his fellow villagers didn’t have any sympathy for him. Most of the people had genuine feeling for him, and wanted to help him out one way or another. But these were the same people who themselves were caught in some kind of fix. There wasn’t one among them who had any real pull. They quietly did what they needed to do to get by with their own sweat and tears.

Ghanshyam was one of these. Though a Kurmi by caste, he wasn’t poor. He had twenty acres of land, and had bought a tractor with a loan from the bank. He grew beans and vegetables and rented out his tractor. And yet it was still tough for him to meet his monthly bank payments of seven thousand. The market price for wheat and other crops about to be harvested was below cost in the market. A farmer named Bisesar from nearby Balbahra village had taken out a loan from the Grameen Bank in order to plant soya beans; a couple of months ago, in order to save his farm from auction, he climbed up a powerline, touched a live wire and died. Small farmers and farm workers were quitting village life and coming to the city in droves; this made Ghanshyam uneasy.

That day Mohandas had a slight fever. He’d been weaving baskets all day and all night, hauling water to the seedlings they’d planted, and was so tired that he’d fallen asleep without eating anything. When he woke up, he felt a little warm. He was still resting on the terrace when Ghanshyam came. He’d also brought Gopaldas, Kasturi’s brother-in-law, along with him. The two of them told Mohandas that a friend of a friend of theirs knew the general manager of the Oriental Coal Mines, S.K. Singh. They told Mohandas to wash up and get dressed quickly and to catch the next bus to the mine. Ghanshyam and Gopaldas were nearly jumping out of their skins with excitement. They said that it was of the utmost importance that he go right away since the general manager was leaving to go on vacation the day after next. Gopaldas opened his bag and produced a pair of pants and shirt that he’d thought to bring with him. ‘Put these on! You’re not going to the manager looking like an old sack of bull’s balls,’ he said, and laughed along with Mohandas.

It proved not difficult at all to meet S.K. Singh, the general manager of the Oriental Coal Mines; the new shirt and pair of pants that Gopal had given Mohandas gave him a whole new level of confidence. He told S.K. Singh the whole story about how he’d come for the job interview on the eighteenth of August 1997, and had come in at the top of the list of candidates who were offered jobs; how on that day he deposited all his certificates and papers in the employment office, but never received the formal letter of offer; how Bisnath from Bichiya Tola had been working for five years having stolen Mohandas’s name as depot supervisor, earning a monthly pay cheque of ten thousand. Ghanshyam had advised him not to mention when he’d gone to the mine to collect his papers and been beaten up at the behest of the clerks of the employment office, and was later threatened in Lenin Nagar by police inspector Vijay Tiwari.

S.K. Singh had an excellent reputation as a manager who was on the level. If he did get mixed up in any funny business, it was merely due to his abiding fondness for a fine glass of whisky. Otherwise he was so on the level that he was capable of neither hurt nor help.

In any case, after listening to the story from beginning to end, the general manager summoned A.K. Srivastav, welfare manager of the Oriental Coal Mines, and instructed him to launch an enquiry, adding that he wanted a full report in a month’s time when he returned from holiday. Mohandas was so moved by this development that he was on the verge of tears, silently incanting the names of Kabir and Malihamai.

The enquiry took place the following week. Welfare Officer A.N. Srivastav arrived at the apartment located at A/11, Lenin Nagar. Bisnath had got wind of the entire affair beforehand and there was nowhere he hadn’t spun his web. He’d been living in Lenin Nagar under the name of Mohandas for five years, so everyone in the area knew him by this name. No matter who A.K. Srivastav asked what was the name of the person living in A/11, the answer was invariably ‘Mohandas!’ And the name of the man he himself had approved a loan from the welfare fund, and whom he’d himself known for over five years, was called ‘Mohandas.’ And the individual he saw in the office of the general manager, the man who called himself Mohandas — well, he had a hard time believing that someone who looked like that could be a college graduate. Srivastav had his doubts. Despite the clothing that Gopaldas had provided, years of hardship and penury and labour had imbued Mohandas with the look of a slightly demented illiterate. Enquiry officer Srivastav thought it over and concluded that it was possible that the depot supervisor was really someone else and had taken the name ‘Mohandas,’ but he couldn’t believe that this person insisting he was the real Mohandas, could, in fact, be Mohandas.

Bisnath’s preparations had been stunning. He rolled out the red carpet in welcome for Srivastavji. He instructed his wife Amita, who was wearing a low-cut top under her sari, to come into the living room with a tray of cool sherbet. Amita had gone to Lenin Nagar’s newly-opened Shilpa Beauty Parlor for a full makeover. She commented while placing the tray on the table, ‘You didn’t bring sweet Sarita with you, sir?’ He smiled, and the atmosphere instantly became intimate, homely, sensual. The enquiry officer’s gaze was fixed on Amita’s exposed midriff. Those days, fashion shows from Delhi and Mumbai were shown non-stop on the TV news. But this was a living model standing before him, not the TV news, but the real thing.

‘Sir, this is my wife!’ Bisnath announced holding out a plateful of munchies for Srivastav. ‘Kasturi!’

‘It sounds like a rather old-fashioned name, no?’ the enquiry officer asked, picking up a cookie from a plate on the table rather than the munchies that’d been offered.

Amita, half laughing, gushed in, ‘You see sir what happened was that the astrologer told father that a Pisces girl should have a name based in astrology even for her nickname. And then it was settled, that’s why people also call me… oh, it’s not important. They call me what they call me.’

‘Oh! So Kasturi’s your zodiac name?’ he said, addressing Amita directly. ‘Okay, so then what is the name people call you?’ he asked, the grin growing wider, less formal.

Amita scrunched up her face in confusion, and didn’t respond. Bisnath jumped right in.

‘That’s rich, Kasturi! Why be shy about giving your name?’ he asked with a chuckle. ‘Fine, I’ll tell him. Sir, I guess you could say her more common name, what we all call her at home, is Amita. Amita Bhardwaj.’

Enquiry officer Srivastav let out a grunt of laughter.

‘You know, I’m always a little suspicious when ladies don’t exhibit any modesty. Some femininity should be there, shouldn’t it? I’ll tell you what, Kasturiji. From now on I’ll only refer to you as Amitaji! That is, if you don’t object?’

‘No sir, not in the least!’ she warbled. ‘But if you want to know the truth, whenever I hear someone calling me ‘Amita’ I think it’s someone from my very own family.’ She took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. ‘The problem around here is that there’s nobody like us. No one civilized, it’s just these backward people, and for me it gets boring!’

‘Naturally, it will take time to develop these people. There are plenty of projects here in progress for just that purpose. Two years ago what was there? Nothing.’ Srivastav said matter-of-factly. ‘So what do you do with yourself here in Lenin Nagar?’

‘Not much, whatever I can, we ladies have our kitty parties, I’m on a couple of committees for helping out the poorest workers, I like working in social services.’

‘And it’s good that you do, very good. Sarita’s got a deep interest in social services, too. You should come over to our place sometime, and see if you can bring Sarita on board.’ By then Srivastav had completely forgotten what it was he’d come for.

Bisnath was smiling from ear to ear. Now was the moment. He said:

‘It’s like this, sir. Lenin Nagar’s the kind of place where everyone’s suspicious and jealous of everyone else. There’s no easy conversation or having a laugh with your neighbour. And now this much ado about nothing. Someone didn’t get their way, so they found some perfect nobody, threw him a few peanuts, and next thing you know a complaint’s been filed. I know who’s been doing the meddling. There’s a lot of caste business going on. Those people are breathing down our necks. I know exactly who’s responsible for this funny stuff, but that doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid of the truth. Please conduct your investigation without prejudice.’

‘What is your father’s name?’

‘BABOOJI! O, babuji! Could you please come into the living room for a moment!’ Bisnath said with a loud voice and a smile.

‘It’s just dumb luck that Amma-Babuji happened to come here yesterday. They’d made some pickle, and used that as an excuse to come by and see us! You should please ask my mother and father themselves their names.’

‘Please excuse me,’ Amita said, as her in-laws were about to enter. She then added in English, ‘We’re a traditional family.’ She got up and left the living room.

Trailing behind Nagendranath as he entered the room was his wife, Renukadevi. Noticing the tilak piety marks affixed to their foreheads, Srivastav couldn’t help but leaping from the couch and greeting them with a heartfelt namaskar. Then, words coated in honey, he asked, ‘May I please know your full names? It’s really just a bureaucratic formality, full names if you don’t mind.’

Nagendranath didn’t pause for a second: ‘My name is Kabadas.’ He reached inside his kurta and drew out a necklace. ‘I took a vow and took this necklace and since then the verse of Tulsidas has been my guide and protection, and that’s when I added ‘das’ to my name. And right here is my wife Putlidevi, Mohana’s mother.’ Renukadevi nodded her head in assent.

And thus, the enquiry was completed. Welfare Officer A.K. Srivastav’s investigation concluded that all charges levelled against Mohandas, son of Kabadas, resident of Purbanra district Anuppur, Madhya Pradesh, were groundless. For clarification, he attached the certificates furnished by Purbanra chief Chatradhari Tiwari and the secretary of the municipality, Shyamala Prasad, to the report — certificates given to Srivastav by Bisnath himself.

At the behest of Bisnath and Amita — aka Mohandas and Kasturi — Srivastavji spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing with them at home, followed by an evening of first beer, then whisky, which was the run up to a scrumptious evening meal of desi chicken; and when, at eleven, it was time to get into his Maruti Zen and say goodbye, he continually asked Amita, whom he kept calling ‘Kasturiji,’ if she might, at his behest, come to their house and talk to his wife Sarita about getting more involved in social services.

But in spite of his being drunk, he kept his eyes fixed on Amita’s midriff — in the dark of night, the flesh had grown magnificent and seeped deeply into his psyche.

(This occurred at the time when the director of the selection committee of the public service commission took millions in bribes and then installed thousands of his own government employees all over the state, and who went on the lam after a CBI raid; when suitcases full of banknotes arrived at the residences of top ministers under heavy security protection, while ordinary citizens were barred entry; when an inspector general in Haryana and a cabinet minister were arrested and charged with illegal activities with women, and murder; when the ‘supercop’ famous for killing underworld criminals in encounters turned out himself to be a hit man.

…at the time when, after making Hindi and Urdu the ‘national languages’ of the people of the subcontinent, individuals from powerful political organisations, claiming that they themselves were literary figures, formed committees for the establishment of anti-establishment Premchand, Neruda, Faiz, Nazrul-Nirala as the national writers of India…. at the time when an ill, debt-ridden tailor, with no means

left to support his family, poisoned his wife and two children to death, and was then caught trying to kill himself. He was imprisoned and charged under Indian Penal Code sections 302 and 309 for murder and attempted suicide.)

***

Mohandas had a breakdown after the report of the enquiry committee. Ghanshyam and Gopaldas met once more with the general manager A.K. Singh pleading with him for an additional enquiry, but he said that it’s not how things worked to open a second enquiry. He said that the most capable and trustworthy officer had conducted the enquiry, and he didn’t want to create any sense of doubt in him by ordering a repeat. Later it emerged that Bisnath and Amita had also begun to invite the general manager to their home to make sure he was well fed and had plenty to drink; his wife had also become active in ‘social work’ — and the kitty parties, where she would collect money for the next ladies’ soirée, and keep a little for herself.

A rumour also spread in the coal mines that Amita had seduced A.K. Singh; his car was often spotted outside the gate of A/11 Lenin Nagar, home of coal mine supervisor Mohandas. People also began whispering that Bisnath, too, got involved; it seems that Singh sahib not only enjoyed partying, food, and drink, but men, too.

Mohandas had a breakdown, and smashed into smithereens. He couldn’t eat or sleep, he worked absentmindedly. He was in a state of utter malaise, and all sorts of strange questions and doubts swirled through his mind. So, were all the people who had good jobs and held high positions and ran around in automobiles and caroused who they really claimed to be? The names people went by, was that who they really were? Or had they committed fraud and assumed the identity of others? Was anyone in Lenin Nagar authentic, with a real name, real father’s name, place of birth? Or was everyone like Bisnath, chameleon-like, with many identities, counterfeit? Then Mohandas began to ask himself who, after all, he himself was? Mohandas or Bisnath? And the BA he earned from M.G. Degree College: had that been solely for Bisnath’s benefit, too? Did it happen like this to everyone?

He looked high and low throughout the house for the old postcards sent to him from the government job office. He yelled and screamed at Kasturi when he couldn’t find them. He did end up coming across a few postcards from a few years back with his name and his address. In town, people saw him and either didn’t say anything, or told him he should approach some politician or high-ranking civil service officer about his case. But in his current state Mohandas was unable to do so. Even Pandit Chatradhari, head of Purbanra’s village panchayat, had issued a written certificate declaring that Bisnath from Purbanra was Mohandas; his son, Vijay Tiwari, was in cahoots with Bisnath. He was always stealing glances at Kasturi and, like a hunter, he lay in wait for the day when a broken Mohandas would come fall at his feet and beg for the job at his buffalo dairy.

Mohandas kept noticing that whenever a public water pump was approved by the local panchayat it’d be installed right outside the home of one of the more important people in the village. When teachers were hired, or slots opened up for female teachers or rural health workers, or grants became available for building houses under the Indira Awas program, or funds were released by the Grameen Development Department for digging wells or tilling land, when the Nehru Employment Program had openings in its program for the educated unemployed, those same people would be the ones to divvy up the spoils. Sharda and Devdas reported that the same kind of discrimination happened during lunchtime at school when they ladled out the gruel.

That night for the first time in years Mohandas went over to his childhood mate Biran Baiga’s house; they got some stiff mahua brew and made a pork curry. Gopaldas also came. The group of four or five began drinking at seven. They’d also got hold of a dholak and a pair of manjira. That day Mohandas had got paid by the Seth from Vindhyachal Handicrafts for the bamboo ware he’d made: twelve hundred rupees. Gopaldas also had a bulging wallet. Biran Baiga was hosting, but the money for the liquor and meat had come from Mohandas. The stuff that Biran’s wife and sister brewed was so strong, it’d burst into flames if you rubbed it against the wall.

In the soulful music, Mohandas and his friends forgot about their sorrows for a little while. Bihari played the dholak, Parmode the manjira. Mohandas, buzzed and feeling good, sang:

Hello mister train man where are you driving your train?

Tell me where you drive your train

And I’ll tell you where you can find me and mine

Tell me your name, your village, where I can find you

Love pushes love along the tracks

Only news about love reaches us way out here

Love makes us dance, our bodies spin, whirl

in this town that’s as conjured up as love, the mirage

Here’s my address, what’s yours?

How can I reach you, mister train driver?

It was two in the morning by the time the women served dinner. Everyone was ravenous. Biran’s sister had used mustard oil to prepare the pork with spices, garlic, onions; the smell filled the entire courtyard. Everyone helped themselves to a roti and dug in. There was also a big pot of rice. Mohandas, however, was silent. It was as if the singing had stuck a little needle in him; he felt a stitch in his chest that he tried to suppress and forget about by drinking more than the rest.

With a handful of food he was about to scoop into his mouth, Mohandas stopped, looked over everyone, and then looked at them once more; a sob then emerged, followed by uncontrollable weeping. Gopaldas, Biran, Bihari and Paramodi were so hungry and it’d been so long since they’d had such a good meal that they were a little bit offended at Mohandas’s outburst. Taking bite after bite of food, they asked while chewing, What’s the matter? Why don’t you eat first?

Mohandas wiped away his tears and asked Biran Baiga, ‘Who are you? What’s your name?’

‘Biran. Biran Baiga,’ Biran said with a laugh.

‘And your father? What’s his name?’ Mohandas continued.

‘My father’s name is Dind-wa Baiga,’ he responded, still laughing. ‘And you’re drunk on the ma-hoo-wa.’

Everyone thought that was funny. Mohandas’s eyes were bloodshot. He plonked his fingerful of food down on the tin thali and raised his voice:

‘Biran, Parmodi — tell me if you can, who am I? And don’t just feed me lines or treat me like an idiot. I want all of you to swear on Malihamai!’

‘You are Mohandas, your father is Kaba, and your mother is Putli,’ Biran said firmly, poking Mohandas in the chest with the finger he’d been eating with. The group began laughing. Mohandas didn’t respond but regarded Biran for a moment before staring down the rest of the group. He wanted to put a stop to his fears about whether these people were who they said they were, or some other people. Then the feeling crept in that they were to a man quite real people who’d been, like him, cheated out of something and, they too, had had the rug pulled out from under them. The only difference was that he’d found out the secret, whereas the rest of them were still in the dark.

Mohandas wanted to instruct his childhood friends to go to government offices, go to skyscrapers and mansions and coal mines and factories in the cities, and to Lenin Nagar, Gandhi Nagar, Ambedkar Nagar, Shastri Nagar, and other residential colonies like them and ask around to see if some imposter has deprived them of their rights and is living there saying that they are them, their father is his father, and they’re from where he is from. But even though he was buzzed he felt that if he told them this they’d just say he was drunk.

His four friends were busy eating. Biran’s wife Sitiya and his sister Ramoli joined them. The two had also been drinking the mahua, and it was all frolic and fun with them, laughing and joking and eating. Mohandas, however, had by then separated from the group, and sat in the corner alone where he’d taken the bottle with him, letting out little sobs between singing verses of Kabir and taking swigs from the bottle.

It was four in the morning when his mates slung Mohandas over their shoulders and took him home. It was the first time Kasturi had seen her husband in this kind of shape. She began castigating Gopaldas and Biran until Gopaldas handed her a thousand rupees and said sorrowfully, ‘I kept saying you’ve had enough, you’ve had enough, but he wouldn’t listen. Take this, it’s the money that fell out of his pocket.’ That quieted her.

It was seven in the morning when Kabadas started with a fierce coughing fit, as if a tornado were stuck in his throat. It showed no sign of abating. Blind Putlibai ran around crazed, like a cow broken loose from its tether. Her cries echoed through the neighbourhood; Kasturi awoke, and tried to shake Mohandas awake. But he was still drunk with mahua and showed no signs of consciousness. She poured a bucket of water over him, causing him to open his eyes. They were as red as if soaked in blood. He was still intoxicated. She screamed, ‘Get up! Go run get a doctor! His cough is deathly!’

Men, women, and children from the village began coming over. Devdas and Sharda stood panicked beside their grandfather’s bed. It was as if his insides had exploded; each cough came with spit full of blood and flesh. Lines of ants began forming on the ground; horseflies began swarming.

Everyone tried to shake the drunken sleep out of Mohandas. It was no easy task, but he finally began steadying himself with his hands and lifting himself up; everything looked terrifying through those bloodshot eyes. He didn’t recognise a soul, and he couldn’t focus. Then suddenly a big grin came over his face. He struggled with all his might to look directly at the man he recognised, Ramai Kaku. Mohandas’s voice came out like gravel: ‘Kaku, who am I, what’s my name, Kaku, tell me, tell me!’ Mohandas then collapsed on the spot into a lifeless heap.

The wails and cries of the village women rose, and Putlibai’s were the loudest. Soon it was a kind of harmony of women’s lament.

Kabadas died. The flies covered the bamboo and cutter under his cot. He’d been up half the night shucking bamboo and it was only yesterday they’d received an order from Vindhyachal Handicrafts to make thirty baskets and fifty winnows.

That morning around seven thirty the cat had pounced on and gobbled up the pair of myna birds out in the open of Kasturi’s room. Mama myna was carrying two eggs in her belly; crushed feathers and drops of blood still littered the earthen floor of the room; the day before Kasturi had covered it with cow dung.

Mohandas, who had been left passed out in the courtyard, wasn’t conscious enough to be aware of how his father’s funeral rites were conducted; he wasn’t there to witness how village and caste elders took Kaba’s body to the cremation ground, how Mohandas’s mother Putlibai kept rapping her forehead on his cot and how she cried while she cleaned his blood and spit from the mattress, basket, and water jug; how little Devdas took the place of his father and lit his grandfather’s cremation pyre, and how his childhood friend Biran Baiga performed the kapal-kriya, the ceremonial breaking of the skull. Mohandas knew nothing of this. The low-caste gosain priest shook Kasturi down for five hundred rupees, and the forest guard took another five hundred for himself; the wood he used from Patera for Kaba’s pyre wasn’t even dry. All the money Gopaldas had given Kasturi was gone.

Mohandas snored with vigour. He opened his eyes a couple of times, looked around as if he had been brought someplace he didn’t recognise, then went back to sleep. Maybe it was the deep sleep, or maybe the mahua had been adulterated with lentina or besharm leaves, or maybe it was the pork curry that’d been bad. But if any of these had been the case, Biran, Parmodi, Bihari, Kitiya, and Ramoli would’ve have come down with something. But they’d all been fine, and what was more, as soon as Kaba died, they all busied themselves arranging for wood, going to Khanda village to tell the gosain what had happened, and making sure all the funerary arrangements were made properly. Mohandas’s drunkedness wasn’t an ordinary one.

‘The mahua’s flooded his brain. Mix jeera and ajwain with yogurt and spoon it in his mouth!’ Biran Baiga advised.

Kasturi mixed the jeera and ajwain in a little cup and brought it over to Mohandas; Gopaldas took Mohandas’s head in his lap. Mohandas’s eyes and mouth opened, and he regarded the two as if he had no idea who they were. In a weak and barely audible voice he asked Kasturi, ‘Who are you, sister? And who am I, tell me!’ He then smiled at Kasturi and began humming:

Hey Bilaspur lovely

I’m a Raigarh lad

Don’t you think we’re made for each other?

This was too much for Kasturi, and she began to break down. Sharda also began to cry at her father’s condition. Gopaldas patted Kasturi on the shoulder, took the little cup from her hand and told Mohandas, ‘Here, take your medicine.’

Mohandas looked at him sheepishly, as if he himself were a little child, drew the cup to his mouth, and drank it in one gulp. Maybe somewhere in his mind stirred the wish to get better. Kasturi and Gopaldas were relieved; maybe it would make a difference — otherwise, they’d have to call the doctor.

Mohandas fell back asleep.

Mohandas slept in the same spot in the same corner of his house for five days and four nights nonstop. The word had spread in the village that he’d completely lost his mind and he didn’t recognise a soul anymore, not even his wife and kids. Some had it that the mahua he’d drunk had been diluted with urea, while others insisted that his summer-heat-induced faint at the Oriental Coal Mines that day had erased his memory. Vijay Tiwari spread a rumour that his spotted dog had bitten Mohandas by accident, and now you’ll see, as sure as the sun will shine, Mohandas will start barking like a doggie. Everyone had his own rumour. It was tough for Devdas and Sharda; they went to school and were asked by the teacher and kids, Is your papa a loony toon? Does he even know who you are anymore? Is it true he only sleeps and sleeps — and if so, how does he bathe and pee and poo?

A rumour even spread that one night Mohandas got up in the middle of the night, grabbed his father’s machete, and ran around trying to slash and kill everyone in the house. Kasturi tackled him and blind old Putlibai tied him up with a rope, otherwise god knows what might have happened!

(All of this was happening at exactly the same time as when the ‘India Shines’ campaign was in full force, and the finance minister and World Bank promised that as long as the five point eight per cent rate of economic growth that started in 1990 continued for the same number of years, India would become the United States, given the fact that the US became the US in fifty years with half that rate of growth.

…it was the time when I was diagnosed with bone tuberculosis, two of my lumbar discs in a state of advanced degeneration. I was confined to bed for nine months and the smiling heads of the Buddhas carved from the Bamiyan mountains in Kandahar were being destroyed by rocket fired missiles…

…it was the time when four years’ worth of the sweat of destitute workers, nineteen thousand tons of steel, and four hundred and fifty seven thousand cubic metres of earth were moved during the construction of Asia’s biggest, and the world’s most expensive and modern, metro rail system… At the time when the houses and homes and fields and yards of more than fifty million adivasis and dalits and aboriginals were submerged under water for the construction of thirty five hundred dams… At the time when twenty million people living in India didn’t have drinking water… and seven hundred million didn’t have a place to wash, bathe, piss, or shit.

…it was the time when the parties in the Left coalition raised hell in the streets of Delhi to protest against a rise in gas prices, when some ninety percent — nine hundred and twenty million Indians — never bought a drop of gas in their lives…

…it was the time when the police fired on and killed a dozen starving farmers in Ganganagar and Tonk in Rajasthan because they’d thrown rocks demanding water to irrigate their withering crops…

…it was the time when Abdul Karim Telgi ran a counterfeit postage stamp operation worth billions of rupees, with several high-ranking politicians and officials working in cahoots. It was the time when an elderly critic of Hindi letters proclaimed that a bureaucrat-turned-writer was the new Muktibodh, and a second old corrupt critic insisted that some paper pusher was Premchand and Phanishvarnath Renu reincarnate and rolled into one. It was the time when the atom bomb blew up at Pokhran and the Goodwill Bus was running between India and Pakistan after the Kargil war.

And it was the time when the waters of the Kathina river were exacting revenge in Purbanra for the paper mill and the rotting wood at the dam by inundating the land where Mohandas had planted his cucumbers and watermelon and honeydew…

The land where Mohandas, crying ‘hu tu tu!’ had played with Kasturi in the strong current of the Kathina, the memory of their hot passion under the glow of the starry night was the birth, nine months later, of Sharda…)

The truth was that Mohandas wasn’t crazy, and nothing was wrong with his memory. The blow to his psyche had silently festered during the week of unbroken sleep, stupor, and drunkenness. When he awoke, he was again the same Mohandas: a person who knew full well that he and only he was the real Mohandas, son of Kaba, resident of Purbanra, district Anuppur, Madhya Pradesh, who had, some ten years ago, earned a BA from M.G. Degree College, and was second in his class. He was the Mohandas who’d been denied a job because he had no connections, no pull, and no money to use for bribes. He wasn’t a member of any gang or group or mafia because he didn’t belong to a caste that had any power. He knew full well that he and countless others like him had been cheated and lied to and tricked for many, many years, but he had no means to do anything about it.

And one other thing that he knew full well was that Bisnath from Bichiya Tola, son of Nagendranath, who’d assumed the guise of Mohandas Vishwakarma, son of Kabadas, and who was pulling in ten thousand a month as a depot supervisor at the Oriental Coal Mines, was in no way, shape, or form Mohandas. No, he was a soulless bastard, a dyed-in-the-wool caste fascist, and a fraud who wielded so much power that Mohandas, compared to him, was nothing more than a sick, whimpering little mouse.

Mohandas knew that his father — the real Kabadas — had died of TB, after coughing up bloody phlegm while making bamboo baskets, mats, and winnows; but he didn’t have the capability to prove this, since Bisnath’s father Nagendranath was still living as Kabadas in Lenin Nagar and Bichiya Tola — and he was the one who had the papers to prove it.

Mohandas’s silence grew every day. The dam on the Kathina had taken away one of his livelihoods, so he began working at Imran’s Star Computer Centre as a typist, and making printouts and copies. His son Devdas began working at the roadside Durga Auto Repairing Works, helping repair flat tires and fix whatever car problems he could with a screwdriver and wrench. He made one or two hundred rupees a month, enough to cover his school costs. It’d been two years since Sharda had quit working as a nanny for Bisnath’s kids and doing their household chores; Renukadevi had gone to Lenin Nagar to live with her husband. A year ago, Sharda got work in town at the Aishwarya Beauty Parlor. Shikha Madam was crazy about Sharda and helped her out with school. She said, ‘Sharda, one day you’ll become a model and then Miss World and you’ll be on TV!’ Sharda, who was eight, dreamed every night that this would come true.

Kasturi kept an eye on people’s crops in addition to working in the fields of neighbours and villagers. Putlibai’s knees had turned to stone after Kabadas’s death, and she could no longer walk. In order to relieve herself, she had to crawl on all fours out back, and then come back to her corner where she sat on her burlap-like mat. Her blindness had grown even more severe.

It was in the Star Computer Centre that Mohandas met Harshvarddhan Soni. He’d come there to have some photocopies made for his legal practice, and to have some letters typed. By then, Mohandas was a fast typist and made few mistakes. He told his whole story to Harshvarddhan right then and there.

Toward the latter part of the twentieth century, I’d spent a couple of decades as an active member of a particular ideological political party; Harshvarddhan Soni had been in the same party. His life had also been full of the same struggles and sorrows, victories and defeats. The son of a woman who was a middle school teacher, Harshvarddhan was, from the beginning, independent-minded and quite perceptive. His older brother, Srivarddhan Soni, had come in first in his BA class for engineering; despite the degree, however and after the joblessness got worse and worse, one night, five years ago, he’d tied a rope to the ceiling fan and hanged himself. The tragedy of his brother’s suicide made such a deep impact on Harshvarddhan, son of a shopkeeper and middle school teacher, that even during his studies he began participating in the student wings of political organisations. He married outside of his caste, and was punished for doing so by being expelled from it.

Harshvarddhan Soni then earned an LLB and made his living working alongside his party in the local court on legal matters. When Mohandas told him the story that day at the Star Computer Centre — it wasn’t really a story, but a real account of a living life — he decided to take his case and seek redress in court.

‘How much money do you have at the moment?’ Harshvarddhan asked, looking at Mohandas’s patched-up shirt and washed out jeans. ‘I’ll take your case, and you will receive justice.’

Mohandas’s eyes lit up, and his frail body began trembling. For an instant he didn’t believe that it was possible someone would aid him like this.

‘Right now I have eighty rupees,’ he answered. ‘In a few days I’m supposed to get forty more. And Imran pays me a couple of hundred in wages.’

Harshvarddhan calculated that Mohandas at most could be counted on for five hundred a month, while it took in the vicinity of five thousand in court fees just to have the case heard. The economic policies of one government after the next transformed India’s big cities into little Americas, while putting people who lived in the same country into the poorhouse, but in tiny villages and undeveloped places, and creating countless Ethiopias, Ghanas, and Rwandas. A professor who toed the ideological line of a connected political party made around fifty thousand a month in Delhi-Lucknow, Mumbai-Bhopal, Kolkata-Patna, and a no-name freelancer could expect five hundred to a thousand rupees for a two page piece; but the hardworking, industrious Mohandas, from the wrong side of the tracks from a forgotten village, and those like him, took a whole month to scrape together four hundred.

Harshvarddhan realised that he himself would have to find the funds if Mohandas were to have his day in court. He put in a thousand of his own money, asked friends for another two thousand, and got the rest from the charity fund of the Lions Club — in other words, he was able to get the cash.

Slowly but surely, one way or another, judge (first class) Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, who preferred his bidis to smoking cigarettes, who was thin as a stick, whose bony cheeks jutted out, whose brow was scored with countless wrinkles, agreed to hear the case of Mohandas in his court of law.

Mohandas, s/o Kabadas, caste Vishwakarma, r/o Purbanra, district Anuppur, M.P. versus Vishwanath, s/o Nagendranath, caste Brahmin, r/o Bichiya Tola, currently r/o A/11 Lenin Nagar, Oriental Coal Mines, district Durg, Chhattisgarh.

The moment the court went into session, S.K. Singh, the chief executive of the Oriental Coal Mines, along with welfare officer A.K. Srivastav, along with other senior executives, were summoned before the court to testify and explain how and why it was that the man who had been working for five years as deputy depot supervisor known as Mohandas Vishwakarma was, in fact, Vishwanath (s/o Nagendranath, r/o Bichiya Tola).

Judge Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh ordered the district magistrates of Anuppur and Durg to launch an official enquiry into the matter and instructed them to report their findings to the court within two weeks’ time.

The court order and summons by bidi-smoking judge G.M. Muktibodh created chaos in the Oriental Coal Mines. The local newspapers ran the headline: WHO IS THE REAL ‘MOHANDAS’?

Anil Yadav and Khalid Rashid — local reporters for NDTV and Aajtak national news channels — sent clips of the story to Delhi and Bhopal, but it didn’t fit into the ‘National Scene’ or ‘Indian Panorama’ segments, and didn’t even made the ‘Regional News’ because the story didn’t include any big politicians or bigwigs from the big cities of Delhi-Bhopal-Lucknow.

(This is a story from the time when Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s ‘Munna Bhai MBBS’ was making a killing at the box office. George Bush and Tony Blair had both been re-elected and were returned to power, and Saddam Hussein, his beard giving him the look of a crazed fakir, face covered with wrinkles, was writing poetry in an American prison, and former Indian Prime Minister V.P. Singh, who instituted the recommendations of the controversial Mandal Commission that set aside job and school slots for the lower-castes, was diagnosed with cancer, his kidneys were failing, he was on dialysis — just like J.P. had been — and was quietly painting oil canvases in a corner of Delhi.

It was the time when the district collector from Patna, Bihar — Gautam Goswami — whose photo was on the cover of Time as a hero when the big floods hit that year, later made off with tens of millions of rupees from the flood fund; and it was the time when the new government constituted a new film censor board, and placed at its helm a nawab from a royal family, former captain of the Indian cricket team, but who was unable to delete a scene in a film where he was caught red-handed hunting the endangered black buck and other animals…

It was the time when for fifteen years running each and every vacant position connected with a Hindi language post was filled with a son, a son-in-law, a daughter, a father-in-law, an arse kisser, or a right-hand man of a search committee member, right out in the open, without shame, without any CBI inquiry or any questions asked in the Rajya Sabha or Lok Sabha.

It was a time when the Human Resources Minister had transformed the public sector into a machine for corruption that churned out thinkers, pedagogues, sociologists, novelists, historians, intellectuals, artists, teachers… and the political battle to capture the minds and hearts of the youngsters was on, by endlessly re-writing and re-re-writing history texts and schoolbooks.

It was the time when India ranked seventh among the world’s most corrupt countries, sixth among nuclear-armed nations, second in population, while in poverty Bangladesh was at the top.)

Both Harshvarddhan Soni and Mohandas were confident that the court of the judge G.M. Muktibodh would separate milk from water and sort out right from wrong. They were confident for two reasons. The first was based on the fact that the magistrate smoked bidis and drank strong chai from the streets, and there was no sign at all he was looking to have his palms greased. The man was not corrupt.

The second reason was that truth was in Mohandas’s corner: he was the real Mohandas, BA.

‘These lies will come crashing down like a house of cards! Like the light of dawn, all will be revealed! Victory to Malihamai! Please let it be so, Kabirguru!’ Kasturi’s gloomy life was once again sprouting shoots of hope. Though Putlibai’s blindness had grown even more severe since Kabadas’s death, she still sat on an old mat in the corner, like an ancient hawk with clipped wings, her ear forever trained toward the inner rooms of the house.

And so one morning at the crack of dawn, while Mohandas was eating his breakfast of leftover rice and potatoes and getting ready for his appearance in court, the rapturous voice of Putlibai suddenly echoed throughout the house. She chirped like a merrymaking bird,

‘Little one! Devdas! Come quick and take a peek in the living room! I think the myna bird’s made herself a new nest, what do you think? Come quick!’

Mohandas was trying to finish his food as fast as he could so that he could get to court early; people had warned him that the judge who puffed mightily on his bidis was a stickler for starting on time. Five minutes late and he’d bump the case being heard to the following day and start straightaway on the next.

As he wolfed down his breakfast of stale rice and potatoes that’d have to last him the whole day, his blind old, bird-like mother sang out in a rapturous voice:

Sing the song of satguru

Sing the song of satguru

Sing the song of satguru and set your soul free

The chief executive of the Oriental Coal Mines, S.K. Singh, was not present in court. His lawyer was there to plead on his behalf. The company welfare officer A.K. Srivastav had brought his complete enquiry file with him, and gave it to the judge for his perusal, along with all supporting documents. Harshvarddhan Soni was deflated: of the three witnesses from Bichiya Tola he’d called to testify that the man who had been working at the Oriental Coal Mines for several years as a junior depot manager was their childhood friend Vishwanath, not Mohandas, two of them didn’t show up, and the third, Dinesh Kumar Sahu turned into a hostile witness and testified in front of the packed courtroom that Vishwanath was the real Mohandas. Then he pointed his finger at Harshvarddhan Soni and Mohandas and claimed that the two of them had one month ago come to his house and told him that they’d give him five thousand rupees for telling the court what they told him to say.

Judge Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh set the next hearing for one month’s time; Harshvarddhan and Mohandas were stunned.

They now pinned all their hopes on the report of the district magistrates. If Mohandas was going to get justice, it could only be when the truth came forward.

Harshvarddhan and Mohandas were speechless when, during the following court session, the reports of the district magistrates of Durg and Anuppur were presented. The investigations found that charges regarding the name and identity of Mohandas s/o Kabadas, deputy depot collector at the Oriental Coal Mines, were baseless. According to reliable testimony, circumstantial evidence, and after questioning several members of the grameen and panchayats, it was indisputably proven that Mohandas was Mohandas, and not Vishwanath.

Later they found out that Vishwanath had dropped ten thousand on the patwaris of the two districts, Durg and Anuppur, plus some hard liquor and spicy chicken. None other than Vijay Tiwari had picked up Bisnath in his police vehicle and helped him deliver the bribes to the patwaris. In any case, that was the real meaning of an inquiry headed by the collector, aka district magistrate, aka zilla adhikari: in the fine tradition of the administrative services, the inquiry was pawned off onto the lowly patwari. Whenever a court ordered a collector to make an inquiry, the collector would take note of the order, then send it to his subordinate, the SDM. The SDM would entrust the task to the tehsildar, who would order the sub-tehsildar to take care of it. That’s how it went, from the revenue inspector, aka IR, aka qanungo, until it finally landed in the lap of the patwari, who, finally, was the collector’s eyes and ears.

Bisnath and Vijay Tiwari handed over the stack of hundreds to Kamal Kishore, patwari of Bichiya Tola and Purbanra, plus a bottle of Macdowell’s No. 1 whisky, and butter chicken, and mutton seekh kabab — Kamal Kishore fell at the men’s feet in gratitude.

‘Have I ever let you down before? All this cash — Jesus and Krishna! With all this money I’ll turn a mouse into a moose, a club into a spade, a farm into a freeway!’ the patwari said all dreamy, jumping for joy while stuffing the money into his bag. He downed a triple of the Macdowell’s No. 1 in one shot, and just like that, right then and there, without moving an inch, the problem had been thoroughly investigated; the one-page white paper — a most official report — was readied, and the inquiry conducted by the district collector into the matter of Mohandas versus Vishwanath was completed in under fifteen minutes.

To put it another way, this rust-eaten steel frame of bureaucracy that had been readied for power by the English over subservient India had just transformed Bisnath, s/o Nagendranath, into Mohandas, s/o Kabadas.

Mohandas again broke down. He incanted the name of Kabir non-stop. He sat for hours in front of the little shrine to Malihamai. She only took the thickest, sweetest cream as an offering. And only from goat’s milk at that. High casters didn’t frequent her shrine. The thakurs, baniyas, babhnan, and lalas had their own gods and goddesses. Gosains, rather than brahmins, conducted her puja. It was said that brahmins who had shared food with dalits or adivasis, or who married them were called gosains in their own caste community.

Mohandas went to Khanra village and found Siu Narayan Gosain, and gave him twenty rupees and an uncooked mixture of dhal, rice, turmeric, and gur, with which he performed a puja to Malihamai; he also made an offering of a full half pound of fresh goat’s milk cream to the goddess.

Something else happened in the meantime. One morning at dawn, Kasturi was out in the fields doing her morning toilet with a couple of other women from the village. There was some commotion behind the bushes, as if someone was hiding.

For her own safety, Kasturi had taken to tucking a little scythe into her the waist of her trousers; she knew all too well that even after giving birth to two kids she was still the loveliest woman of the village. As long as she could remember she’d been subjected to the vulture-like stares of the local Brahmin slimeballs.

Kasturi stood up from her squat and removed the scythe from the cloth at her midriff. Holding it in her hand she approached the bush carefully; Ramoli, Sitiya, Chandna and Savitri followed.

‘Hey, now’s who’s that hiding behind the bush? Come on out, I’ll cool you down, you cunt wipe! What are you scared of, arse breath!’ screamed Kasturi. The rest of the women surrounded the bush, each with a lota in hand for washing their potties.

Chatradhari’s son Vijay Tiwari dashed out from behind the bush and ran off. His flabby body looked like a chubby watermelon as he scampered away in his boxers and undershirt.

Kasturi chased him for a bit, knife in hand. Ramoli, Sitiya and Savitri hurled their potty lotas after him. Inspector Vijay Tiwari ran as fast as he could, stumbling and tripping. The women screamed after him:

‘Call the TV station! They’ll get some great clips!’

‘Run away, run away! Big boy inspector is making fudge in his pants!’

Vijay Tiwari was now scared through and through. Who knows what kind of nonsense Mohandas and his lawyer Harshvarddhan Soni might cook up and publish in the papers or get shown on TV?

(All of this was happening at the time when, for the first time in Asian political history, an Indian woman was made member of the communist party politburo, while another woman kicked away the chair of the prime minster’s post.

It was the time when three non-stop giggling women were appointed members of the jury of the most important film festival where Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha or Kamol Gandhar or Shailandra’s Teesri Kasam were never even shown.

It was the time when a female US soldier working at Abu Ghraib prison stripped Iraqi prisoners naked and made them climb on top of one another to form some kind of pyramid, and then draped them with the American flag.

It was the time when power was defining gender.

It was the time when a girl from the north-east of India was kidnapped into a car near Dhaula Kuan in Delhi and raped for two-and-a-half hours nonstop by five men while travelling on every VIP road in Delhi. And it was when in Imphal, after the rape and murder of Manorama, hundreds of Krishna-devotee women stripped naked in front of the army headquarters to protest.

It was the time when two women failed in their struggle against the Sardar Sarovar dam, and so four thousand dalit and adivasi homes and fields and yards were submerged, and in the flood, forest animals and plants and trees and so much more was swept away.

The sad faces of those tired women were shown on TV, nonstop, in tears, defeated.

It was the time when I left Delhi and moved to Vaishali and from my rooftop could see that very same Jhandapur in Ghaziabad where exactly fifteen years earlier the revolutionary artist and performer named Safdar Hashmi was murdered.)

In the court of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, judge (first class), all the witnesses and evidence — and even the two investigative reports of the two district magistrates’ inquiries — corroborated that Bisnath was indeed Mohandas. So, then: this pauper who’s in a bad way and who swears and swears he’s Mohandas — who is he? This court didn’t have any direct judicial authority over this question. It possibly could be another case altogether, if some lawyer submitted a petition on behalf of the plaintiff.

Harshvarddhan Soni couldn’t sleep for three days and three nights. He positively knew that Mohandas was Mohandas — but it wasn’t just that this was difficult to prove, it was becoming impossible. He sent me an email:

‘This is too much. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. Neither can Mohandas. Everybody knows he’s the real Mohandas, but it’s impossible to prove. I’m at my wits’ end. I don’t know what to do. The two of us are receiving threats: shut up or else. In the meantime I found out that Bisnath has taken on Ras Bihari Rai as his attorney. You know him as well as I do — big shot in the ruling party. His wife’s a member of the city council and is the head of a few government organisations and NGOs. There are half-a-dozen people ready to testify on behalf of Mohandas: Biran Baiga, Gopaldas, Biharidas, Ramoli, Sitiya… but their appearance will make it seem like they’re witnesses we just bought off… each one of them looks like a homeless person.

‘What I’m thinking is that I’ll go straight to the judge and have a word with him. He smokes bidis and looks a little, well — off. His name is G.M. Muktibodh. He’s Marathi, but he speaks Hindi like you wouldn’t believe. After court lets out he sits outside drinking chai at Ramdeen’s little tea shack on the side of the road.

‘And I’ve noticed that in court when he looks at Mohandas, there’s something in his eyes that stirs a little bit and makes him nervous. The veins on his forehead get bulgy and they look like they’re going to pop out of his head. I’m actually a little scared that they might one day burst. There’s something in his eyes that reminds me of a spy or secret agent who can very quietly see deeply into anyone’s soul, like he can probe and pierce anything. The word is that his house is filled with books and he reads and reads every night until three in the morning.

‘I’ve also heard something else that’s a little disturbing, that even though G.N. Muktibodh is a judge of the first class, the government’s got the CID watching his every move…’

With no other option he could think of, Harshvarddhan Soni took what amounted to a gamble. Any time a lawyer decided to meet a judge about an ongoing case, and on top of this with a judge with an air of mystery — it’s a decision fraught with danger. If G.M. Muktibodh got angry, Harshvarddhan could jeopardise his entire career. His past had been full of every possible struggle, strain, and sorrow; the memory of the suicide of his despondent brother who couldn’t find work never left his mind for a moment. ‘The practice of law’ was just a bunch of words. Most of the people who came to him didn’t have enough money for a fancy lawyer. He wasn’t going to see a cent from Mohandas’s trial, and had even put in five thousand of his own money on the case. And yet — he decided to take the risk and go and meet the judge.

Harshvarddhan felt a little hopeful when he arrived at the door of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh’s flat and saw on his face an expression as if he’d already known he was coming, that he knew absolutely positively that Harshvarddhan was planning on paying him a visit. He pulled up a rickety old wooden stool and said, ‘Have a seat! I’ll go make some tea,’ and disappeared into the kitchen.

Harshvarddhan glanced around the room. Everything was scattered everywhere. Piles of books lay all around, some of them kept open with pencils, cards, or leaves stuck in the spine. Maybe he was fond of those particular pages and had to read them over and over. The condition of the room suggested that he lived alone. Harshvarddhan had found out that the judge had been transferred frequently from one undeveloped area to another, ones with many adivasis, where cases like this were rare: cases where big shots or rich businessmen or people at that level might see any grief. Harshvarddhan saw portraits of Gandhi and Marx on the wall. A small Ganesh statue was kept in the corner. Bookshelves against the left wall were filled with law books that looked as if they hadn’t been opened in years.

G.M. Muktibodh returned with the chai along with a little dish with simple snacks. He set down the tray on a makeshift coffee table, and sat down on his cushion. It was good, strong street chai, boiled like hell.

A silence hung over the room. Harshvarddhan didn’t have the courage to begin the conversation. An ancient clock that probably needed a key to be wound stood against the wall in front of them. It was stopped. Next to it was a calendar with a drawing on its upper flap of Bal Gangadhar Tilak with his pagri turban wrapped around his head; the year on the calendar, Harshvarddhan noted, was 1964.

‘I do realise that,’ (the judge said after an endless sigh that had come from the very depths of his being) ‘Mohandas is the real Mohandas.’ His voice sounded as if it were coming from the bottom of a well; it was a quiet, peeping voice. He took a big sip of chai. The strain on his face loosened up a bit with the gulp and the taste of the hot drink.

‘And that other man’s a fraud. From start to finish, he’s impersonating someone else. I know this, I know that his name is actually Bisnath, son of Nagendranath, and that he’s stolen the identity of Mohandas and has been illegally living at A/11 Lenin Nagar working as deputy depot supervisor. He’s a fraud, a crook, a sleaze!’ he said, sometimes switching to English. Though he didn’t speak loudly, there was a kind of sharp, steely resolve in his voice. He took a packet of bidis out of his pocket, picked one out, first blew on the fat end, lit it with a match and took a long, hard drag.

Harshvarddhan felt as if he’d been transported to another time and place.

‘This is what I came here to tell you,’ he said. ‘But how do you know who is the real Mohandas?’

‘It’s not hard to figure out. If you’re at all perceptive and have a little wits about you,’ Muktibodh said, then began to look worried and got lost in thought. He took another long drag on the bidi. ‘I’ve been up for three nights in a row, I can’t sleep. This experience is absurd and very tense.’ The bidi scissored between his fingers and was on the verge of going out. His gaze looked as if it were trained on himself.

‘The system has collapsed, just like the twin towers. Now what’s left for the subject of the state and the poor is anarchy and calamity. As far as I’m concerned, we are facing totally new forms of capital and power. Mohandas is being denied simple justice because it’s something he can’t buy. Oh!’

The veins of Muktibodh’s forehead were throbbing and his hands were shaking. He seemed uneasy and stood up, and seeing that his bidi had gone out he took a pack of matches from his pocket and lit it up again.

‘All ideas have their end. When intellectual and philosophical systems that at one time created a lot of change are transplanted into another, what happens is sometimes they can be transformed into totally hollow jargon, senseless bullshit, the ramblings of rogues. It’s happened time and again throughout history. And yet…’

He puffed on his bidi and held the smoke in his lungs for a long time. Maybe he wanted the nicotine to quiet the restlessness in his breathing. He began to cough. He pressed his left hand to his chest, and then said in a scratchy voice, ‘But there’s something in man, this strange thing, that no matter when, no matter what kind of power is trying to come down on him, it will never destroy him. And that thing’s the quest for justice. The desire for justice is indestructible and timeless.’

He tossed the bidi he’d stuck between his index and middle fingers out the window. It had gone out.

Harshvarddhan Soni was confused. What kind of a person was this? To meet this kind of person disguised as a judge in this day and age seemed like an impossibility, a fantasy with a one-in-a-million chance of being real.

The judge was nervously pacing the room, but stopped suddenly — a bright, shining, mischievous twinkle now gleamed in his eyes that glowed like hot lead.

‘It’s OK, Harshvarddhan, don’t feel like you need to stay, and please, don’t worry. I know you haven’t been able to sleep for the past few nights, just like me.’ A huge smile spread over his face. ‘Partner, you can sleep without worrying about a thing. Sleep like a dead horse. Now I’ve got to work on a little something. ’

He approached Harshvarddhan and placed his hand on his shoulder; Harshvarddhan felt as if the hand had no weight at all. It was a hand made of paper, flowers, a dream, or language.

Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, judge (first class), quietly whispered into Harshvarddhan’s ear: ‘There is one power that I have, one and only one power. That is… “secret judicial inquiry.” I can myself make inquiries. Just leave it to me.’

When Harshvarddhan walked out of Muktibodh’s flat it was as if he was emerging from a cave of dreams and returning to his own time and reality: the one with Mohandas, Bisnath, himself, and the realities of today.

A short four days later, Viswanath and his father Nagendranath were arrested and sent to jail by order of G.M. Muktibodh, judge (first class), and, in accordance with sections 419, 420, 468, 467, and 403, were charged with counterfeiting, fraud, racketeering, theft, and embezzlement. The court ordered S.K. Singh, CEO of Oriental Coal Mines, to immediately begin official proceedings against Mohandas Vishwakarma, aka Vishwanath, deputy depot supervisor, and to report the findings of the proceedings to the court in two months’ time. On top of this, proceedings and investigations should be launched in all concerned departments and divisions of the company against all managers and workers affiliated and connected with the matter either directly or indirectly. If the Oriental Coal Mines wanted to pursue the cases separately under criminal law, then this court would support such actions.

The news caused a huge stir. The arrest of the fake Mohandas was printed on page one of the newspapers. It sent ripples not just through the Oriental Coal Mines, but among officials and union leaders and workers in all sorts of factories and public sector enterprises. Several officials and workers were suspended. Others went on extended holiday. Everywhere there was panic and confusion. Thousands of Bisnath-like individuals had stolen the identities, qualifications, and abilities of others in desirable residential colonies like Lenin Nagar, Gandhi Nagar, Ambedkar Nagar, Jawahar Nagar, Shastri, Nehru, and Tilak Nagar — and had worked in their places for years, earning thousands of rupees with each pay cheque.

It turned out that Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, judge (first class), Anuppur (M.P.) had invoked his emergency security power, and he himself had conducted a ‘secret investigation’ into the matter.

That night, he’d stayed up late reading. At nine in the morning he phoned his driver and instructed him to bring the government car that, up until then, he’d used only to drive to and from court. He made another call to H.S. Parasi (Harishankar Parasi), who was a public prosecutor, and a third call to S. B. Singh (Shamsher Bahadur Singh), who was the SSP of Anuppur. Each of the three officials set off to fulfill their respective duties with due diligence and faith. A fourth call he made to Harshvarddhan Soni.

‘Partner, go get some notarised paper and be on standby!’

Shamshed Bahadur Singh recounted that the judge went straight to A/11 Lenin Nagar, near Matiyani crossing. Bisnath was out with Vijay Tiwari doing some favour for a politician. The only one at home was Kasturi, aka Reunkadevi, whose rackets were the chit fund, social services, kitty parties, and money games. The judge asked her right off the bat her father’s and mother’s names; Kasturi madam, aka Renukadevi, having seen the siren mounted atop the government car, got nervous.

The judge’s vehicle then left Lenin Nagar and began heading back along the Mirzapur-Banaras road. Exactly thirty-five kilometres later the car turned onto the dirt road that went toward the village of Awazapur. Half an hour later, the car pulled up in front of quite a grand house in Lankapur village. The judge only had two questions for Lalu Prasad Pandey and his wife, Jai Lalita. Number one, their own names and the names of their children. And the second, the names and addresses of their sons-in-law. Then he instructed public prosecutor H.S. Parsai to get the notarised paper from Harshvarddhan Soni and take their sworn statements.

The judge’s car then arrived at the home of the head of the village panchayat, where he took his and other witnesses’ testimony.

The SSP had a huge smile on his face. ‘Fraudsters just can’t think more than two steps ahead, and in the end, every last one of them gets caught. I called the SHO of Anuppur police station from Lankapur and told him to go to Bichiya Tola and Lenin Nagar to arrest Nagendranath and Bisnath, otherwise they would have escaped and caused lots of problems!’

The rest of the story is quite concise.

Harshvarddhan Soni and Mohandas were ecstatic with their victory. Kasturi danced and pirouetted throughout Purbanra. Once again Putlibai rummaged around the back of the rice bin until she found the bag of bisunbhog rice she’d stashed in there. The smell of the kheer being made with goat’s milk, khandsari and bisunbhog filled every corner of the house. The myna bird used her tiny beak to help crack open the eggs in her nest, and the little chicks emerged, filling the rooms with their innocent chirping like a new kind of music.

The pain from Putlibai’s rheumatism abated, and, for the first time in a long time, she swept the courtyard on her own. She sang with audible delight, but mixed in with the joyous bird-like voice was a sad note, too:

When you’re not here

My world is lonely

No joy in gold or home,

In sun or moon

Harshvarddhan Soni told Mohandas that the next case he’d bring would be to get him his rightful job at the Oriental Coal Mines. The court has confiscated all of your certificates, transcripts, and recommendations from Bisnath’s service book. They’ll be returned to you. Mohandas embraced Harshvarddhan; his ravaged body was shaking, and he was getting choked up; tears of gratitude and joy flowed in equal measure, like a rain shower in the month of Shravan.

Biran Baiga hosted another all-nighter of feast and song and wine. Sitiya cooked a juicy pork dish made with mustard seed oil, garlic and onions, and garam masala. Three jugs of mahua were produced. This time, in addition to the dholak and manjira, Ram Karan brought a harmonium. Gopaldas, Biran, Bihari, Parmodi, and Mohandas all drank. Sitiya, Ramole, Kasturi, and Savitri also all took part in the libations. They sang and danced. Mohandas couldn’t figure out how he managed to remember each song, one after the next; time simply came to a standstill.

This time Kasturi was the one who drank a little too much. Every few minutes she’d pull Mohandas over into her arms. ‘Hu Hu Tu Tu! Wanna play kabbadi with me? Hu Hu Tu Tu!’ she said each time, tickling Mohandas.

‘Eh, scram, go back to Inspector Tiwari’s cowshed!’ Mohandas said, teasing her, and everybody thought this was the funniest thing.

Savitri chimed in. ‘Hey, check out Tiwari! The police inspector’s shit his underwear!’ This set off a bomb of hysteria that echoed around Purbanra the rest of the night.

Mohandas and Biran Baiga stood up together in the middle of the courtyard as if they were in a courtroom. The questioning commenced.

Mohandas: ‘You! What’s your name? WHAT IS YOUR NAME? C’mon, tell the court, we don’t have all day!’

Biran Baiga: ‘My name is Biran Baiga. And my father’s name is Dindua Baiga! Dindua Baiga!’

Mohandas: ‘You! And What Is My Name? MY name? What IS it?’

Biran Baiga (driving his finger into his chest) ‘You sonofa-bitch bum! Your name is Mohandas! MOHANDAS! Mohandas Kabirpanthi Bansor!’

Mohandas: ‘And my father’s name?’

Biran Baiga: ‘You father’s dead! His name was Kabadas.’

Mohandas: ‘You! So if Mohandas is here, and my father Kabadas is up there, in heaven, then, Mr. Smartypants, who’s the cuntworm sitting over there in jail in Anuppur?’

Birandas: (jumping up and down and clapping his hands) ‘That’s fryface depot supervisor Bisnath! Fraudster! And his father’s a two-time fraudster. His wife? Fraudster! And the bigwigs in Lenin Nagar who run the coal mine? All fraudsters!’

Parmodi, Sitiya, Bihari, Ramkaran, Ramoli, Savitri, and Gopaldas’s laughter rang anew as they picked up the tempo on the dholak, manjira, and harmonium.

(Don’t you think that amid all the pain and sorrow and bleak colours of this story little drops of joy have been interspersed? Don’t you think so? Well, you’re right. In the rough reality of the lives of the poor and victims of injustice, sometimes little bright colours flash. Like when combined forces of power and capital suddenly swoop down in a surprise attach on the myna bird, utterly destroying her nest, and then all you can see are the feathers and drops of blood of the little chicks. These drops are never visible in the history book that’s been written by the lackeys of a human resource minister of some political party. This is the job of a historian: to cover up the stains and spots at the edges of the clothing of his own time.)

The month was full of the unexpected. You won’t find an account or news about what was happening 1050 kilometres from Delhi anywhere else outside this story. Here’s a short summary of the circumstances that Mohandas’s life passed through:

Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, judge, first class, was all of a sudden transferred to Rajnandgaon, and he left Anuppur.

Ras Bihari Rai, Bisnath’s lawyer, who was a well-known leader of the party in power and whose wife was a member of the city council, got both Bisnath and his father Nagendranath bailed out of prison with a single court hearing. Ras Bihari Rai was a skilled player of the politics of the day. As they were releasing Vishwanath aka Mohandas from prison after making bail, they cleverly wrote ‘Mohandas’ and nothing else into the Police Record. Because the final sentence had yet to be delivered, Mohandas aka Vishwanath was not a convinced criminal in the eyes of a law, but just a suspect. In other words, in the official police documents, the two men who were released on bail from the prison at Anuppur were let out under the names Mohandas (aka Vishwanath) and Kabadas (aka Nagendranath). The names that were written after this on the release orders were scribbled so they weren’t legible.

And then all of a sudden one day the news came from Rajnandgaon that judge G.M. Muktibodh had had a brain haemorrhage and was taken in a coma to the Apollo Hospital in Bilaspur. At the hospital, Congress party stalwart Srikant Verma, and his dear old friend, Nemichand Jain, were there with him. But after seventy-two hours of a tough fight between life and death, Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, judge, first class, breathed his last breath. And with it he said, ‘Hé Ram!’

With Harshvarddhan Soni, when he got the news of his death, was the inconsolable Mohandas Kabirpanthi Bansor of Purbanra village. With the judge’s life had gone out his lone hope.

The most recent news is that Bisnath and his wife Renuka have been making a lot of money from their side businesses related to the coal mine. Bisnath and Vijay Tiwari are still in cahoots. These days he’s openly come into politics and is running for a seat on the district council. And his caste brothers are also in positions of high power. They help him out in every way possible. He’ll say, ‘Who is the real Mohandas? Who is the fraud? That’s something that I and I alone will decide! That two-bit piggy shithead cast aspersions on my honour, and took the job I had fair and square. So now I’ll show him what true force is!’

When I went back to my village last week I saw that the look on Harshvarddhan’s face was of numbness. His eyes were red. He said, ‘I haven’t slept the last three nights. I have no idea what I’m going to do. The people in Purbanra are telling the truth about Bisnath. The worst poisonous snake. A viper’s viper.’

He let out a deep sigh. ‘Every couple of days Bisnath creates some kind of catastrophic criminal act in Lenin Nagar. Sometimes he’ll grab a gold chain off someone, or else he’ll beat someone senseless. And when someone owes money to the chitfund his wife runs, she’ll have them beat up, walk right into their house, and take whatever stuff she pleases. And then when a criminal complaint is lodged at the police station, it’s done so in the name of Mohandas, since most of the people still know Bisnath as Mohandas. Then it’s poor Mohandas, the real one, who gets arrested and dragged off by the Purbanra police.’

Harshvarddhan’s eyes filled with tears of helplessness. ‘Bisnath colluded with police inspector Vijary Tiwari and bought off the guards at the station with food and wine, and now they’ve beaten Mohandas within an inch of his life. They broke his hands and feet and he can’t walk. And four days ago his mother Putlibai fell into a well and died. Kasturi is cobbling together whatever she can to put bread on the table.’

I looked up; Mohandas was approaching, limping heavily. He was not wearing the washed-out, patched up pants and torn checked shirt, but only a loin-cloth. His hair had fallen out, and he wore cheap round eyeglasses. He walked slowly, using a walking stick, shuffling along like an old man.

‘Ram Ram, uncle!’ he said upon seeing me, joining his palms together in greeting. The deep wrinkles on his face were a monument to his suffering and defeats. He looked like a very old man, maybe eighty or ninety. He sat down on the ground, using his walking stick as a support. But the gruff voice that came out of his mouth with a groan wasn’t our local tongue, but Hindi, the ‘national language.’ He said:

‘I take your hands and beg: please find a way to get me out of this. I am ready to go to any court and swear that I am not Mohandas. My father’s name is not Kabadas, and he is not dead, he is alive. They really beat the hell out of me, the police did, on Bisnath’s order. They broke my bones. It hurts to breathe it’s so bad.’

I noticed his lips were cut badly and he was missing some teeth; they must have smashed them out in the police station. He could barely put two words together.

‘Whoever wants to be Mohandas, let him be Mohandas. I am not Mohandas. I never did a BA. Didn’t come out on top of my class. Never was fit for work. Just want to live in peace. Leave me be, no more beatings. If you want something, take it. Take what you need and fill up your homes. But leave me to my life and toil. Uncle, please stand by my side.’

It came out that Mohandas’s eleven-year-old son Devdas hadn’t been home in ten days. Some said that Bisnath had him disappeared, others said he’d fled to Mumbai in fright.

Still others claim to have seen him in the jungles of Bastar.

(It was the time when at the top of a hillside near Bharuch stood a thirty-year-old Dhanuhar archer named Raghav. Night after night he’d stay up late whittling down shaft after shaft of bamboo into arrows. He drew the bowstring taut and shot arrows at the sky, then ran down the hill to retrieve the arrows that’d come back down.

Again and again and again — countless times he fired arrows at the sky and retrieved them from the dirt.

But then the arrows began to be submerged under water, and it became difficult to find them and pull them out. The fields of the valleys that lay between the mountains were filling up with water: inundated, a massive flood. Village after village began to go under, and trees, too. North and south and east and west were going under; all memories were going under.

Yet thirty-year-old Raghav kept shooting arrows into the sky and running down to retrieve them as long as he himself wasn’t swept under.

Where is Raghav now? Just where he was, where there’s now nothing but water. A vast, bottomless sea where electricity is created. There once was a hilsa fish in Bharuch. The greatest fish in the rivers of India, the most magnificent in the world. The hilsa is only able to survive in the fast moving current of a river.

The hilsa at the dam is sick from the polluted water, and has probably died.

It happened at the same time as when I was writing this story in a language that imprisoned me inside just like Iraqis were imprisoned in Abu Ghraib. Or like Jews in 1943 were imprisoned inside a German gas chamber. Or like a drowned hilsa fish in dirty, stagnant, polluted waters. Or right now like Raghav Dhanuhar, still fighting.

This was the time of Mohandas, of you, of me, of Bisnath, of what we see this very day when we look outside our windows.

And the time everybody knows as the first decade of the twenty-first century, when all of us were celebrating the one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary of the birth of Premchand, the King of Hindi Fiction.

But really, tell the truth: Doesn’t the name of Mohandas’s village, Purbanra, remind you even a tiny bit of the Mahatma’s Porbandar?