Dahanu Road: A novel (14 page)

Then he went to the bedroom and started undressing.

“How was it?” she asked.

The question deafened him. It would take him years to answer that question. He begged Ahura Mazda not to let any tears form.

“Why are you silent, Shapur?” asked Banu. “What happened?”

“Nothing …”

Speaking was crippling. But he mustered up the strength to say more, otherwise Banu would panic.

“Either the Warlis will get violent, or they will be frightened into submission.”

She was relieved to hear him speak. He could tell from the way her eyes relaxed.

“You know why I am plump?” she asked.

“No.”

“Because I am pregnant, you big fool.”

He sat the edge of the bed, sand between his toes. He needed to wash it off as quickly as possible.

“Say something,” said Banu. “Why are you silent?”

“Because I am happy,” he replied.

For the next few days, Shapur Irani stayed in bed.

He lived there as though it was his own country, a continent on which he could make no mistakes. All he could do was rest his head on a pillow and cover his eyes with his arm. These were simple actions that could not lead to bloodshed or anything else unpleasant. Nothing he did on this bed could cause anyone to die. It was safe, a womb in which he could float for as long as he liked.

He would have stayed there if it were not for Banu.

She walked through the house lighting divas, staring at the small flame, begging the light to absorb all the sadness that had entered her husband, sadness that had been brought by bad spirits, and she had faith that the divas would take the darkness away, cleanse his aura, so he could rise again and be the man she loved so much.

He could not let her down. And so, when he saw the falling leaves outside his window, Shapur Irani rose, ate eggs and meat, drank milk, and polished off a quarter of whiskey in an hour.

Once he went outside the house, he realized that he was mistaken about the falling leaves. Those were not leaves. They were his beloved chickoos that had fallen to the ground in thousands.

“Look at that,” he told Banu. “A whole carpet of chickoos.”

“The Warlis will eventually come for work,” said Banu. “They need to eat too. They also need to survive.”

He did not blame his workers for not showing up. They were no doubt still reeling from the attack on the beach.

“What am I to do? Who will gather fruit? All this maal falling to the ground …”

“Come, sleep next to me,” said Banu. “Talk to your son.”

“Khodi’s sleeping.”

“Not this son. Talk to the one in my stomach. We will call him Sohrab.”

“Why are you so sure he is a boy?”

Shapur Irani lay next to his wife, but he was far from comforted.

A carpet of chickoos covered the ground and not a single worker to pick them up. In a way, he was glad. Gustad and the other landlords would feel the pinch. They had much more land than he did, thousands of trees, and he hoped they would see the chickoos rotting on the ground and think about what they had done.

At night, Warlis travelled in groups and started hacking down chickoo trees.

They spat on the chickoo and swore never to eat it again, even if they were dying of hunger, even if they became so thin that their ribs ripped through their skin and plunged into the chests of their own wives when they embraced.

It did not surprise Shapur Irani. He would have done the same.

Perhaps it was only natural that the chickoo had led to so much pain. It had been brought to India by the Portuguese. A tree transplanted by plunderers could only lead to more illness.

The only good thing that came of it was the attack on Gustad Mirza’s bungalow.

Even though his granary was full of grain and eggs, the Warlis set fire to it all. Consuming his food would be like taking
nourishment from the very thing that their children had bled for. But he had enough goons to drive the Warlis away. While he reclined on his sofa, rested his arm on the carved back of a lion or elephant, his men ensured his safety.

Some Warlis went after Ejaz the Pathan.

By the time Shapur Irani got to Ejaz’s shack, the bleeding Pathan was standing with the wooden club by his side, his body heaving up and down like a panther’s.

Nothing could kill him.

After three nights of hitting back, the Warlis went home and told their wives and children to run to the jungles and hide so that no one could touch them.

The hamlets were empty. Only faint smoke rose from burning leaves.

Now Gustad Mirza made sure that he got in touch with the journalists from Bombay. Encouraged by a deft bribe or two, the papers spoke of the cruel heart of the Warlis, and how they had hacked down chickoo trees and destroyed the landlords’ homes without the slightest regard for their wives and children who slept inside.

The police were employed and men were picked up at random, thrown into jail, and severely beaten. Anyone who spoke of the Red Flag was considered a conspirator, so no one spoke of the Lal Bauta again.

But in prison, the Lady of the Red Flag knew the true course of events. She called the policewalas “motherless sons.” Anyone who had a mother would not raise a hand on innocents, she screamed. But her words made no difference to the superintendent. He told her to look outside the window of her cage, at his jeeps. Then he brought policemen in front of her, men
with broken noses. “See their noses,” he said. “You cannot help animals, O Lady of the Red Flag.”

Even though her anger could break dams, she did not call for violent action.

She called for an indefinite strike. The landlords had no hearts, but they had pockets.

Each year, the rice season provided a vast amount of money for the landlords. If the chickoo trees and rice fields were not harvested in time, they would incur a loss of thousands of rupees. When the landlords realized what was happening, they tried to use force again. But this time the men did not mind dying. They refused to pluck chickoos or harvest rice.

Even though Shapur Irani was losing money too, he secretly admired the resilience of the Warlis. Every man had a gladiator in him. No matter how feeble, how poor, how scared.

“Why not give in to their demands?” asked Banu. “What do the tribals want?”

“They want higher wages. They want all their debts to be cancelled. They want the torture to stop.”

“Then do it,” she said.

“The landlords are afraid that any change could take away their life of luxury.”

“Shapur, you call this luxury? Living here, alone, on this farm? You know they attacked Ejaz who lives so close by. They could have attacked us.”

Suddenly there was acid in her voice. It had shot out, left a few droplets on his cheek.

“I will never let anything happen to you or the children, I promise,” he said.

He got up from the bed and went to the cupboard. It was a teak cupboard with the words “There is nothing like love” engraved on it. Shapur Irani liked the double meaning of this line. He had bought this cupboard from an old Iranian who was broke and had only his furniture left to sell. Perhaps the words “There is nothing like love” were bitter words to the old Iranian, but to Shapur Irani the line was true. He loved his wife and child so much that there was terror in his love. He opened the cupboard and enjoyed the creaking sound it made. When the door of the cupboard was fully open, he moved aside and said to Banu, “Look at this.” It was a shotgun, a long one, with a thick handle and a shiny barrel.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

“You know I don’t like guns,” he said.

“Then why is this in the house?”

“I am a strong man, but if twenty Warlis break into this house, I can’t protect you unless I shoot them.”

“Then let us go away from this place.”

“What?”

“Just for a short while. Let’s stay with my mother in Bombay. Once everything settles down, we can come back.”

“I will
never
leave Dahanu. Do you understand? Don’t ever ask me to leave.”

“But, Shapur …”

“Do you even know what I have been through in Iran? My father was once beaten. The Arabs treated us like servants. We had to walk with our heads down in their presence.”

“I’m just saying it for the protection of our son. And with another one on the way …”

“I will protect him!”

Banu knew now was the time to keep quiet.

His temper was like gasoline. If she spoke even a word more, then she would provide the match and he would hurt himself. She knew he would never hurt her, but her husband was dangerous to himself. He once banged his head against the wall in anger and she had no idea why.

He walked about the room holding his gun. “You don’t understand what it’s like. I’ve found a home here. This is
my
land. I was driven out of Iran. When I left Iran, I left a home. Don’t ask me to do it again!”

He started loading the gun in front of her.

She wanted to say something to him, but she held her son’s hand in the hope that it would calm her. Once the gun was loaded, Shapur Irani stormed out of the main door and started firing in the air.

The strike kept on going. Like a black train on a long, unending journey.

With each passing day, the carpet of chickoos grew thicker.

Not being able to watch his fruit die, Shapur Irani spent his time at the train station, drinking tea, chatting with the station master, catching a glimpse of passengers through the iron grilles of their windows. But no matter where he went, his mind was on the carpet that awaited him at the farm. Light brown at first, then dark, wet with rottenness.

It was futile to pack a few baskets himself. Some Warlis were willing to work for five times the daily wage, but Shapur Irani refused to employ them because by breaking the strike
they were letting their own people down. A few even got jobs as foremen, making deals with landlords, ensuring that their debts were fully cancelled, in exchange for which they would force their own tribesmen to work on the farm.

Nothing was clean.

When the train came in from Bombay, the complaint was the same.

The shortage of rice was hitting Bombay hard.

Bombay. That was all anyone cared about. The city produced nothing but consumed everything, and farmers like him were supposed to be grateful for it.

Just as he was about to leave the train station, he saw the superintendent. He was strolling about the platform, sipping coconut water with the buoyancy of a tourist. All he needed was a straw hat to make his vulgarity complete. Shapur Irani wanted to give him a set of binoculars to help him focus on the bullets he had let fly, on the shards of bone, on the droplets of darkened blood that lay on the ground. He could not bear to be near the superintendent. Even the sight of him made Shapur Irani feel that the superintendent was an extension of himself, a limb that had lost its way.

But he stayed and listened because the superintendent had news.

“The Lady of the Red Flag has been released from jail,” he said. “It’s those bastard journalists. They took photographs of the dead bodies and were about to print them in the papers.”

It burned Shapur Irani to see the superintendent pulling his pants up, looking around with an air of lazy authority.

“When the politicians in Bombay got wind of this,” he continued, “they decided it would not be wise to print the photos.
The British are still here. We cannot show a divided India. So they reached a compromise. The Lady has been released from prison.”

That was not all. Some of her demands had been met.

A law was passed that all previous debts were to be cancelled. There would be no bonded labour from that day on, no marriage slaves. A uniform, fixed daily wage was decided.

The Lady of the Red Flag had asked for one more law to be passed, that no landlord could buy land from the tribals. During the famine that had hit the state of Maharashtra hard, the landlords had bought Warli land for a pittance. An empty belly and a weakness for liquor had caused many Warlis to senselessly leave their thumb impressions on stamp paper.

Nothing could be done about it now, but this could be prevented in the future. However, this law was not passed.

Still, victory had been hers. The faith the tribals had shown in her had made her transform from Lady to tigress.

The landlords had given in at her roar.

From a prison cell, she had fought the likes of Gustad and Pestonji. She had dug her fingernails deep into the backs of all the Hindu and Muslim landlords who had mocked her.

She might not have ripped their backs, but she had left a mark.

When Shapur Irani got to his farm, he stood outside Vithal’s hut.

Place and events did not always match. Here he was, standing under the shade of a coconut tree, nightingales above him, his shoulders warmed by the shy rays of evening light, while Vithal and his wife mourned the death of their baby girl, a loss that would never have any meaning.

Nothing could heal the hearts in that hut.

No one would be able to warm their core, which had turned hollow. They would never be able to straighten their necks again, so bent with sorrow their shape resembled that of a scythe.