The Faith of Ashish (21 page)

E
very morning, Ranjun paused at the door of his shop, bowed low and touched the dust of the threshold to his forehead. "To guard my luck," he told his sons. "To keep my contact with the gods clear and strong."

Ranjun refused to eat rice and vegetables unless Pooni poured a generous amount of
ghee
over them. The clarified butter carried a high price, and no one else in the family was allowed to taste it. But Ranjun considered it an important part of his diet. He was determined to make himself fat. "Poor people are thin," he insisted. "Rich people are fat. I want everyone to see my prosperity in the layers around my belly."

If everything pleased him, Ranjun sighed and grunted and went about his work. If it did not, he flew into a terrifying rage.

"Do not go near him," Pooni warned little Mayawati. "If he calls to you, run away and hide."

But Ranjun's orders terrified the child. "You come when I call you!" he yelled, and he punctuated his command with a smashing slap that knocked the little girl flat.

Mayawati did everything she could to make herself invisible. She sank into the walls, she disappeared into the shadows, she hid away in secret places that only her brothers knew.

When Pooni came back from the English Mission Medical Clinic, she went directly to the fire pit and started a fire. The water jug was already full, so she filled the cooking pot and put in two handfuls of rice. She bent over the garden and cut vegetables, which was hard to do without cringing, for she still ached badly from the beating.

Ranjun and the boys were at work in the pottery shed. Pooni could hear the rhythmic thump of Ranjun's foot on the potter's wheel and his periodic bark of an order to one boy or the other.

"Mayawati!" Pooni called softly. "Come to
Amma.
Don't be afraid. You can come to
Amma!"

No answer.

The child had taken refuge in one of her hiding places, Pooni thought. She'd probably been hiding ever since she saw her father brutally attack her mother. Poor little girl—so frightened. Poor, poor little child!

As the rice cooked, Pooni stirred in curry and prepared chutney, just the way Ranjun liked it. She scooped out a large helping of the spiced rice onto a pottery plate for her husband. Then she took out the jar of
ghee
and poured the clear liquid over his dinner. Ranjun, of course, would eat first, seated comfortably on pillows spread across the veranda.

Pooni stayed inside while Ranjun ate, slurping his food and smacking his lips loudly. His hand churned round and round as he grabbed up the pieces of rice, dripping with sauce and butter, and stuffed them into his mouth.
He is a wicked man,
Pooni thought.
A cruel and wicked man.

When Ranjun finished eating, he pulled himself up and spread out the sleeping mat so he could rest while the boys ate their meal. Pooni longed to ask Ravi and Jinil about their little sister's hiding place, but how could she with Ranjun listening to their every word? So she brought food for her sons, but she said nothing.

As soon as Ravi and Jinil finished eating, Ranjun ordered, "Get back to work, you lazy boys!"

Pooni divided up what was left of the food onto two banana leaves, one for her and one to save for Mayawati. Pooni ate her share, but still the girl did not come.

When dusk fell, Ranjun closed up the pottery shed. He and the boys cleaned themselves up and settled on the veranda.

"Ravi," Pooni asked her oldest son, "have you seen your sister?"

Ravi shot a nervous glance at his brother, but said nothing.

Cold terror crept up Pooni's back. She looked at Ranjun and demanded, "Where is Mayawati?"

Ranjun stood up. Carefully he adjusted his
mundu,
pulling it high at the waist in the manner of the upper castes. "Did I not tell you, Wife?" he said in a calculated, casual tone. "I sold the girl."

Pooni's legs lost their strength and she fell to the ground.

"Good money she brought me, too."

"Who did you sell her to?" Pooni gasped.

"A businessman of the
Vaisya
caste. He is taking her to a brothel where he will make himself even a better trade, I have no doubt."

"A brothel!" Pooni cried. "Where is it? We must find her and bring her home before it is too late!"

"Oh, no. That's not possible. It is already too late."

"I will find my daughter!" Pooni screamed. "If I must walk all over India, I will find her and bring her home!"

"She is gone," Ranjun said. "Forget her."

Pooni's voice rose to a shriek. She curled up on the ground and pounded her forehead in the dirt.

Her hands shaking, Pooni carefully measured a large portion of
ghee
into a new earthenware pot. She pulled her
sari
up over her head and, with the
ghee
clutched in her hand, hurried to the place of the village god. The rain had stopped and the sun smiled through the clouds. Too bad. On this day, Pooni would have preferred the rain.

"For my daughter," Pooni murmured. She laid out her offering and poured the entire pot of expensive
ghee
over it. "For my Mayawati."

When Pooni returned to the house, Ranjun demanded, "Where were you? I called for water and you were not here to bring it to me."

But Pooni's ears didn't hear him. For all the difference it made to her, she was in the house alone. Pooni said not a word as she gathered up firewood.

"Prepare a platter of sweets for me," Ranjun ordered. "With plenty of sugar and honey and butter."

Pooni loaded firewood into her arms until she could carry no more.

"I had planned to wait until the girl grew older and more beautiful, and take her to the temple to consecrate her to the god Shiva," Ranjun said, a taunting tone to his voice. "If I allowed her to be a bride of Shiva, I could save myself the high cost of a marriage dowry. But is seemed she would stay young forever and I grew tired of waiting. Besides, the businessman paid me a goodly sum for her."

Pooni carried the wood to the fire pit.

"I must tell you, too, that I dealt so wisely with the
Vaisya
that he thought me to be of his own caste!"

Pooni laid the firewood in a large pile on the cooking pit, then she turned her back on Ranjun and went into the house.

Ravi and his younger brother Jinil should not have left their father's pottery shed early that evening. Even though their father stormed about in so foul a temper. Even though they had finished all the work they could do. Even so, they should have stayed until their appointed hour. Or maybe they should have gone to the rice paddy beside the river and collected more clay and sand. Anything except go home early.

When they saw the fire blazing so high, Jinil said, "
Amma
must be cooking something special for us this night."

Ravi quickened his steps.

That's when they saw Pooni jump into the blaze. With the fire roaring up around her, she sat down peacefully and folded her hands.

Jinil screamed and clutched at his big brother. Ravi knew he must do something, but all he could manage was a terrified gasp as he watched in horror.

Pooni opened her eyes wide and looked straight at her sons before the flames consumed her.

"That foolish woman!" Ranjun bellowed from behind the boys. "That filthy insect of a wife! Just look what she has done! Now who will gather fodder for the cow?"

Because he did not know what else to do, Ranjun sent Ravi to the master's settlement to fetch Virat. "He is a
chamar,"
Ranjun said. "He knows how to handle the dead."

Virat, his eyes stinging with tears, dug a hole and buried Pooni's bones along with the polluted ashes. But he said no prayers over her and he offered no sacrifices. Ranjun was nowhere to be found, but Ravi and Jinil stood off to the side and watched in silence.

"Your mother was a kind woman," Virat told the boys. "Perhaps she will come back as a gentle cow."

"Her life held no hope," Ravi said, his voice flat and bitter. "That's why she could not bear to live."

After Virat left, Ravi picked up a large piece of firewood that had not burned and carried it to the pottery shed. Piled against the wall were hundreds of pots, all fired and carefully stacked according to their value. All were ready for sale. Bellowing with rage, young Ravi swung his wood club and smashed the entire stack of pots destined for the Brahmins. As he swung again, Jinil grabbed up pots from the other end of the pile and threw them against the potter's wheel. Ravi turned his fury toward the oven and clubbed it flat. Jinil pounded his way through the remainder of the pots.

When Ravi finally dropped his firewood club, and Jinil wiped the blood from his slashed hands, not one piece of pottery remained intact. They had completely destroyed their father's oven. And his wheel lay upside down, split in two.

"We have no mother and no father," Ravi told his young brother. "We have no little sister. But we do have a craft. You know how to make fine clay, and I know how to fashion good pots. It's easier with a wheel, but I can do it without a wheel. I can fire them without an oven, too, the way we used to do it. We can be the new potters in the settlement."