The Faith of Ashish (30 page)

I
do not approve of this, Miss Davidson. Not in the least," Dr. Moore stated. "A far better plan would be for me to send a message to Landlord Varghese and have him bring a wagon to the clinic and collect the boy."

"No!" Abigail insisted. "I do not trust that man. Please, Sir, Darshina and I can take the boy to his parents."

"And if his parents are not to be found? What then?"

"Then we will bring him back with us and send him to the school in Madras with Krishna."

Dr. Moore's eyes narrowed. "And keep him for yourself?"

"And send him to the school in Madras. But only if his parents are not to be found."

Dr. Moore sighed in resignation. "Why do I try to discuss the matter? I see that your mind is already made up."

Abigail flashed a quick smile to Darshina.

"I will ask Tanal to drive you in the wagon and to see you safely back," the doctor said. "He knows how to find the landlord's settlement."

Tanal, an Untouchable of the carpenter caste, was always willing to run errands for Dr. Moore. Back when the mission medical clinic was first established, when Dr. Moore and the Indian cook were the only ones there, Tanal had brought in his young son suffering from a viper bite on his leg. Dr. Moore treated the boy, and two days later, the child stood up from his bed, well enough to walk home with his father. Before they left the clinic, Tanal bowed low, his hands folded before his face. Through the cook, he told Dr. Moore, "My debt to you will never be repaid. I will remain your tireless servant forever."

And so he had.

When Abigail looked outside early the next morning, Tanal already sat waiting in the cart. He had fitted it with a bench long enough for Abigail and Darshina to sit comfortably side by side with Ashish between them.

Abigail smoothed down the folds of her demure light blue skirt and adjusted her long-sleeved top with the lace insets. Her favorite outfit, saved back for special occasions. She always wore it with a smart navy blue straw hat. (Riding on the make-shift bench in the back of the open cart, however, she did feel a bit of a fool.)

Beggars, beggars, beggars, all along the side of the road. Abigail had seen roadside beggars, of course, but never so many! Crippled or blind, men leaning on sticks and women balancing babies on their hips, maimed children of every age. Poverty and despair stretched out all along the roadside.

"Why so many beggars?" Abigail asked Darshina.

"It is the month of
Thulam,
the most religious month of the year. Everyone is more generous during
Thulam,
so more beggars sit with their hands out."

Sprinkled among the beggars were
sadhus—
holy men dressed in saffron-colored cloth, all with white ash on their bodies and their long hair wrapped up in buns on top of their heads. Each
sadhu
had a mark on his forehead, the sign of his specific sect. One stepped right up and walked alongside the cart holding out a coconut half-shell. Abigail pulled away, but Darshina dropped in a coin.

"Ashish, I have something to give to you," Abigail said. "It is a very great gift and I want you to carefully keep it always."

Ashish looked questioningly from the pale English lady to Darshina, so Darshina translated Abigail's words.

Abigail laid a large leather-bound Bible in the boy's small hands. "I know you can only read a few words of this now, but you are a smart boy. One day you will be able to read the entire book."

Darshina repeated the words in his language.

Dr. Moore, of course, had no idea Abigail intended to make such a huge gift to so small a child. If he had, he would have been furious. He would have stopped her, which is exactly why Abigail took such care to keep it from him. It was, after all, her own Bible. She could do with it as she pleased.

"Be very, very careful with it," Abigail said. "It's a holy book. It tells about Jesus who loves you."

Abigail Davidson had never before seen a landlord's settlement of laborer huts. The primitive conditions in which the workers lived shocked her. Such tiny shelters. So many ragged workers. Eyes so dark and curious, and all fixed on her. Tanal stopped the cart in the courtyard beside the well and spoke to Darshina.

"He will wait here for us," she told Abigail.

Darshina and Abigail climbed down with Ashish. The boy blinked around him at all the staring eyes. Clutching the gift from Abigail, he pushed his way toward his family's hut. Abigail and Darshina hurried after him.

Already word had gotten around, and Latha and Virat came running. Laughing and crying at the same time, they grabbed up their son and hugged him tight.

Abigail, feeling increasingly uncomfortable, busied herself rearranging her skirt and adjusting the hat, which was making her feel sillier by the moment. But Virat stepped forward and dropped to his knees in front of her. He touched his forehead to the ground and clasped her feet in his hands.

"
Nandi,"
Virat said. "
Orupadu nandi."

"He said 'Thank you,'" Darshina told Abigail. "He said, 'Thank you very much.'"

At daybreak, Virat and Latha did not join the other workers. The door of their hut didn't open and no one lit a fire in their cooking pit.

"Let them be," Anup said. "They have earned a day together."

Latha and Virat lay on their sleeping mats with Ashish between them and breathed in the pure air of the holy month. Ashish told them of his adventures at the mission clinic, of Miss Abigail and the doctor and Darshina. He told them about the boy Krishna, with an entire face like
Amma's
eye, and how he would be going away to school. He told them that he knew some English words and that he could read the colored letters on Miss Abigail's cards.

"She showed you how to read words?" Virat exclaimed.

That old guilty fear began to rise up in Ashish again. "Only a few," the boy said. "Mostly just letters."

Virat sat up and reached for the book Ashish brought home. "If this is the
Veda,
we will all die," he said. "Our hands will be cut off for polluting the holy book, and we will be cut into pieces."

"No,
Appa,
this is a different holy book. This is the book of Jesus. And Jesus doesn't mind if we touch it or read it."

"Is this Jesus a god?" Latha asked.

"God is his father."

"I think I understand," Virat said. "Jesus is another of the many manifestations of the divine. That must be it."

"Come," Latha said. She took a small bag of colored powder from behind the rice sack and carried it outside. On the ground in front of their hut she used the powder to carefully draw an intricate design of circles and triangles. "This is a gift for your new god," she told Ashish. "This is a gift for Jesus."

"Will he see the picture?" Ashish asked. "Will he stop here?"

"Perhaps. That's what happened in the story of Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth. One Thursday night she visited a village very much like this one. All the village women decorated their houses to welcome her, especially the upper caste women. But the goddess decided that the house of an untouchable sweeper woman was the most beautiful of all, so that's the one she entered."

"Yes, yes," Virat said with an impatient wave of his hand. "That's a common old tale, but like all the other stories of the gods, it isn't true."

"I think this story about Jesus is true," Ashish said. "And I think he might stop here when he sees the picture."

"If any god exists, he has forgotten us," Virat said.

Latha shook her head. "I think you might be wrong, Husband."

Virat gave Latha a startled look. It was not in Latha's nature to argue against him. He knew he should correct her, but exactly how, he wasn't sure.

"We walked among tigers and leopards," Latha said. "We had no food left. The rains did their best to wash us away. We had no shelter . . . no place to sleep. Master Landlord vowed he would kill us. His hunters caught us in the field and led us back bound like common slaves. The Englishwoman carried Ashish away from us on the back of a horse, and she wanted to send him to their English school and make him into an English boy. And yet, here we are, all together and all well."

Ashish squeezed himself down between his mother and father.

"I think you are wrong, Husband," Latha said.

"Perhaps I am," Virat agreed. "Perhaps we are not completely forgotten."

36

H
arvest!"

When the call finally came, the entire settlement rushed to work. Already the paddies had been drained dry. Already the last of the wheat had been cleaned away from the storage shed and the threshing floor swept smooth. Sharpened scythes lay ready for the men to grab up and carry out to the rice paddies.

"Harvest!"

The settlement rose before dawn and lit their cooking fires. Flames danced in front of every hut and porridge bubbled on every fire.

"I will go the field with you," Ashish begged.

"Of course you will not," Virat told him. "You are much too small."

"I could carry water to you."

"No, my son. The bigger boys will do that. You will stay here and gather firewood so we can cook when we get home, and you will tend to the chili plant by the house so it will grow tall and healthy."

"But Devi will come to take me to Saji Stephen! Please,
Appa.
I will work hard in the fields."

Latha hugged her son and said nothing.

Ashish watched the laborers leave. As soon as they were out of sight, he took his mother's water pots to the well to fill them, but the pot was too big to hold and at the same time get water into it. On his first try, he almost dropped the water jar. On his second, he missed the jar completely and poured water all over his clothes. He stomped his feet and cried a little, but then he drew more water to try again.

"I'll help you," Little Girl called. As usual, she had Baby in tow. Ashish had not talked to Little Girl since he returned from the English Mission Medical Clinic.

As Ashish held out the water jar, Little Girl filled it with a steady hand. Ashish wanted to talk to her, but he didn't know what to say. Everything seemed so different now.

"Are you going to hunt for firewood?" Little Girl asked.

"After I tend the chili plant."

"You should grow more vegetables than only that chili. My
appa
says you can have some of our plants if you want them."

Ashish shook his head. "Your
amma
would be angry with me if I took them."

Little Girl shrugged. "I know where you can find a lot of firewood," she said. "After you tend the chili, I'll show you."

When Sethu came in from the field, Lidya had the cooking fire hot and a pot of rice and vegetables bubbling on the fire. Nothing unusual about that. But the large store of firewood neatly stacked beside the door was most unusual.

"Ashish brought it for us," Lidya told her mother.

"What did you give him in exchange for it?" Sethu asked.

"He didn't want anything."

Sethu called, "Little Girl! Did you go to Ashish's hut today?"

Little Girl shrank back. "I saw him at the well. He needed water to tend the chili plant, but he couldn't fill the water jug. I helped him, that's all. I didn't do anything bad."

"Maybe this one time you did something good," Sethu said.

Two days after Ashish returned home, Devi came to the door of his hut. "Master Landlord says you are to come with me," she said. "Saji Stephen calls for you."

Ashish started to tremble and his eyes filled with tears. He didn't move.

"We must hurry," Devi said.

Ashish wiped his hand across his face and snuffled his nose. "No," he said.

"What do you mean
no?
You must come with me. Master Landlord called for you."

"No! I will not go."

Virat put his hand on his son's shoulder. "I'm sorry, my son. The landlord is our master. When he calls, you must go."

"No," Ashish said, and this time he wasn't whimpering any more. "I will work in the fields with you,
Appa.
Or I will carry water. Or I will gather firewood and tend the chili plant. But I will not go back to Saji Stephen."

Now Devi started to cry. "Please, Ashish. Please! If I don't bring you with me, the master will have me beaten."

"You don't have to go either," Ashish said. "If master landlord hurts us, we will go to the pale English lady and tell her. She will make him stop."

Ashish didn't go to play with Saji Stephen. But Devi did go to work in the garden. She feared the landlord, but that's not why she went. She went because she feared her mother more.

Ashish stepped into the edge of the wooded undergrowth and gathered up all the twigs and branches his small arms could hold. He carried them back to his hut, but he had to drop them outside because a pile of dirt clods blocked the door, each clod attached to a different vegetable plant. Ashish picked up each of the plants and carried it to the side of the hut where the chili plant already grew high and heavy with chilies. He found the broken piece of pottery his mother used for digging and scraped out four new holes. In the first hole he put an eggplant, carefully packing dirt around the roots. Already tall, the plant had tiny eggplants growing on it. The second hole he made bigger and put in a cluster of onions. He had no idea what the other two plants were, but he planted them anyway in the other two holes. Ashish got the water jar that sat alongside the wall of the hut and carefully poured water on each plant, the way Krishna had taught him.

When Ashish stood up to admire his work, and to wipe his muddy hands on his clothes, he saw Little Girl watching him.

"Did you learn about growing vegetables at the mission clinic too?" she asked.

Ashish smiled and nodded.

While Virat sat on the ground outside his hut, enjoying the cool evening and eating his meal, he watched as a cluster of little boys chased one another around in circles. Anup walked over and sat down near him.

"I like to see little boys at play," Anup said.

Virat scooped up another bite of spicy rice and slurped it into his mouth. "Tell Sethu we appreciate the vegetable plants," He said. "Ashish planted them today."

Anup said nothing.

Ashish had been ready to run out and play with the other boys, but when he saw Anup, he sank into the corner and did his best to be invisible.

"Devi tells me Ashish would not go to the master landlord's house with her today," Anup said.

Virat swirled up another dripping bite and lifted it to his mouth.

"Your son belongs to the master landlord. Your entire family belongs to him."

Virat scooped his hand expertly around the bowl and into the edges in search of another bite.

"Look at you, Virat. After everything that happened, you are still alive. Most certainly the gods have smiled on you. But you cannot humiliate the master landlord by disobeying his commands and still hope to survive. To allow your son to behave in such a disgraceful manner is even worse."

"The English have taught my son their ways," Virat said. "The landlord should take the matter up with the English."

"He will not do that. He will take the matter out on you."

Virat focused his attention on the last few grains of rice.

"Ashish!" Anup called. "Come over here!"

Ashish jumped at the sound of his name coming from so important a man. Slowly, he stood up and moved toward Anup.

"Your mother and father are blessed to have a strong and intelligent son like you," Anup said to the boy. "When they are old, they will need you to look after them. And they will have you, too . . . unless Master Landlord sends you away. Then your
appa
and
amma
will have no one to look out for them. They might get sick and have no one to care for them. They might starve to death. And it will be your fault."

"No, no," Ashish said. "I will work in the fields for Master Landlord. I will work very hard."

"You can't work in the fields if the master has already sent you away. And you can't work as a
chamar
either, because no one will teach you the ways. Not the English, because they don't know."

"I want to be a good boy," Ashish whimpered.

"Tomorrow Devi will come to take you to Saji Stephen," Anup said. "What will you do?"

Ashish said nothing.

"Well?" Anup tapped his fingers impatiently. "What will you do when Devi comes for you tomorrow?"

Ashish looked at his
appa,
but Virat kept his eyes on his bowl.

"Come, come, boy! I'm asking you a question. When Devi comes for you tomorrow, what will you do?"

"I will go with her," Ashish whispered.