The Faith of Ashish (7 page)

Even though the doctor had never paid her a greater compliment, Abigail allowed his words to slip past without notice." How can that man claim to own this boy?" she demanded." No one can own another person's child! It isn't right."

Traces of that uncharacteristic smile again touched the corners of Dr. Moore's thin lips. "As neither of us is of the Indian persuasion, let us put the matter to Darshina, shall we?" To Darshina he said, "Is it true that the pompous little man in the white skirt might indeed own this boy?"

Darshina bowed low. "Untouchables and women and Sudras—the Hindu scriptures be saying that the creator god made them as less valuable."

"What?" Abigail exclaimed. "You cannot really believe such rubbish!"

"That being the word of Manu the lawgiver. It be coming to us from ancient times."

"And the word of Manu the lawgiver," said Dr. Moore. "Does it stand true to this day?"

"Oh, yes,
Sahib.
Yes!"

"Created as less valued," Abigail said. "You are referring to the caste system, are you not?"

"According to the laws of Manu, Untouchables are less than human," Dr. Moore explained.

"How absolutely atrocious!" Abigail exclaimed. "You do not accept such a horrid belief, do you, Darshina?"

"Please, you to be coming from outside our country,
Memsahib,"
Darshina said with pointed politeness. "Your ways being right for you, but they not being our ways."

"But . . . less than human? You would never dare defend such an atrocity of a belief!"

"Please, much about the Indian world cannot be to your understanding." Darshina's voice remained mild, but her eyes flashed with a frightening ferocity. "Even though you being English, you not knowing everything."

Twenty-five years old, more or less. That's the age Darshina had told Dr. Moore she guessed herself to be. Five years older than Abigail. Married at the age of ten, Darshina—still without children—became a widow six years later. The day her husband died, she broke her glass bangles and wiped the vermilion marks from her forehead and from the part in her hair to show the world that she no longer had a husband.

Darshina had grown up in a Brahmin family, accustomed to the privileged life of the revered highest caste. But widowhood changed everything. She dared defy the decree her parents-in-law laid down that she honor her dead husband by committing
sati—
that is, by throwing herself into the fire of his funeral pyre and in the flames passing to the next life with him. Her parents-in-law were so furious that they banished her to a small cottage behind the family house where she was ordered to live out her days alone and in
purdah.
Utter isolation. Closed off from the world. A virtual prisoner for the remainder of her life.

But Darshina would not. With her huge dark eyes and her silky pale skin, she managed to catch the eye of the son of the Brahmin priest, a boy who had recently returned from Madras. She teased him and made him promises, and he bowed to her wishes and taught her English. Her father-in-law's bookkeeper caught her alone in the mango grove behind her cottage, practicing this strange language, but he did not betray her. Instead, he practiced English alongside her and talked of taking her away with him. But he never did.

Ten years after her confinement, Darshina ripped the gold bangles from her arms, pulled off her gold earrings and toe rings, and offered them all to the bookkeeper if he would smuggle her out of her prison. He took her gold and she rumbled away in the back of a cart, hidden under a mound of dirty
saris.
She planned to slip out of the cart and walk to Madras where she hoped to lose herself in the crush of the city. But the city was much farther away than she had realized, and the road that led to it, far more dangerous. Burning sun scorched her days, and terror plagued her nights. Hunger and thirst haunted her like a ravenous tiger. By the time Darshina had gotten as far as the mission medical clinic, she barely found the strength to stumble to the door.

"This night the child should rest more comfortably," Dr.Moore said to Abigail as he finished checking over Ashish." However, you would do well to keep vigil over him once again."

Outside in the courtyard, Darshina pulled the soiled bedclothes out of the wash pan, squeezed the water out of them, and spread them across the ground to dry. She wiped her hands on her
sari—
something Dr. Moore had forbidden her to do, so she only did it when he wasn't around—and stepped back inside.

"What is it, then?" Dr. Moore asked.

"Please, the
varnas—
what you be saying as the castes— please, it is not a bad thing," Darshina said in her quiet voice. "Each caste is being good in its own way."

"How can you even say that?" Abigail snapped.

As Darshina spoke, she kept her eyes fixed on the floor. "Without workers, then no rice being harvested. No rice being harvested would mean all people be dying hungry. But without landowners, laborers have no rice paddies giving them work to do. And even if they be working, who can be telling them what to do or how to be doing it right? No one, you see."

Dr. Moore snorted. To Abigail he said, "Should ever you find yourself wondering whether we treat the natives properly and all that sort of rubbish, remember this particular defense offered up by one of their own."

"You please to be saying we should all be the same. But why should that be so?" Darshina persisted. "To you, we Indians not being the same as you English."

Ignoring Darshina, Dr. Moore continued to address Abigail."You thought you would come here and tend to the sick, and that the grateful natives would beg you to tell them about the God that sent you. Well, now you know; they will not. They already have many, many gods of their own. Gods and manifestations of gods everywhere—in people, in trees, in animals, even in stones."

A blush of embarrassment washed over Abigail as she sneaked a peek at Darshina. But Darshina's face remained impassive.

"You cannot have missed their ridiculous temples as you passed through Madras," Dr. Moore continued. "Gods and demons staring down from those gaudy walls—thousands of them!—leering and fiendish and evil." The doctor snapped his bag shut. "An entire country of heathens. That's what India is."

"Mammen Samuel Varghese, he is being a Christian man," Darshina said. "He please to be descending from a long line of Christians. He please to be saying his line of ancestors traces all the way back to your Saint Thomas."

"Saint Thomas, the disciple of Jesus?" Abigail exclaimed. "That Saint Thomas brought Christianity to India?"

"Hogwash!" Dr. Moore said. "That is nothing but an unproven myth. Even if it were true, no one inherits Christianity. If that self-righteous landowner thinks he has any claim on the Christian faith because of some ancient ancestors . . . " The rest of the doctor's retort drifted off in disdainful mutterings.

Abigail knew she should hold her tongue. She saw how Dr. Moore turned his withering glare on Darshina. She watched as the Indian woman's courage faltered and Darshina dropped her gaze back to the floor. Abigail had no right to take issue with the director of the mission medical clinic, not on any subject. Of that, she was well aware. Even so, even knowing all this, Abigail could not stop herself.

"If Saint Thomas came to India and brought Christianity with him, would that not mean that Indians have been Christians longer than we English?"

"Hogwash!" Dr. Moore repeated more forcefully than before. "A disciple of Jesus Christ walking on Indian soil? A holy saint offering his life for . . . for such as
these?
No, Miss Davidson. No, I think not!"

N
o
,
Little Girl, no!" Sethu scolded. Her small daughter, in a struggle to scoop mush into the mouth of her tiny squirming sister, allowed the clay feeding bowl to tip at a precarious angle. The toddler grabbed at the bowl, and porridge slopped onto the ground. "Look at what you've done! You spilled the food! You and Baby will get nothing more to eat today!"

Virat glanced uneasily at Anup's family—each small child rushing about her chores, each cowering under a shower of reproach. Not at all like his own mornings with Latha and Ashish. His eyes kept coming back to the small girl with the bowl. She looked to be about the same age as his son.

"Your daughter—what is her name?" Virat asked.

Anup spat on the ground. "My daughter? I have
four
daughters! Four girls and not one son."

Morning had not fully broken, yet the eldest girl—a slight child of no more than ten years—hurried off for the vegetable garden beside the landowner's house. Master Landowner's cook would expect to find fresh vegetables waiting at his doorstep. It fell to the second girl to tend to the morning porridge that bubbled over the cooking fire. "Devi is the biggest one and Lidya is the one with the scars," Anup said to Virat. "These two—" Here he pointed to the small ones. "They have no names. We call them Little Girl and Baby."

With her small fingers, Little Girl scraped the last of the porridge out of the bowl and, after the slightest hesitation, put it into Baby's open mouth. Little Girl splashed water on her sister's face and on her own hands, and shooed Baby off to play in the dirt.

Gathering up baskets . . . shouting out instructions . . . scolding, worrying, crowding together . . . men, women, and children as young as Devi gathered in the courtyard in preparation of the day's work.

"Your woman," Anup said to Virat. "She will work alongside the laborers."

"But not today," Virat answered. "Today Latha must wait by the road for the landlord to bring our son to us."

"If Master Landlord wishes to see your wife, he will send for her. Until then, she will work the same as every other woman in the settlement."

"But someone must be ready to receive the child," Virat explained. "Someone must be ready to care for him. It is only because of our injured son that we came, and—"

Anup wiped his rough hand across his stubbly face and sighed loudly. "Can it be that you still do not understand? From now on, nothing is for you to decide. It is not for your woman to decide. You both belong to the landowner now, like his ox and his buffalo. Your lives are in his hands."

In the midlands of Malabar, shadowed by the great mountain peaks of the Western Ghats, where rolling hills and sloping valleys push their way to the sea, Mammen Samuel Varghese's lands spread out rich and fertile. Fields, heavy with grain, awaited the spring wheat harvest. Once those fields were reaped and cleared, workers would open trenches that led from the river, allowing the fields to flood into paddies so they could prepare the land for the rice crop. With God's blessing, rice planting would be completed in time for the summer monsoon rains. To be a landowner in Malabar brought great fortune indeed. So lush was the land that it willingly yielded two crops each year—unless the heat and rain came at the wrong times, baking the wheat with drying heat or keeping it so wet it molded on the stalks.

Some laborers gathered up piles of scyths and set to work sharpening them at the whetting wheels, thus ensuring that the workers' cuts would be swift and clean. Others, with loads of fresh cut grass heaped high on their heads, moved toward the fields where the animals roamed in order to tend to them. The rest of the workers headed out to the harvesting sheds to ready them for the coming harvest. Latha went with that group. Virat intended to do the same, but at the last minute Anup beckoned to him and led him away.

Virat followed Anup out into the field, white and heavy with winter wheat. Anup stopped to pull off a handful of wheat heads and rubbed the grain briskly between his calloused fingers. He popped a couple of grains into his mouth and handed the rest to Virat. Virat followed Anup's lead.

"What do you think?" Anup asked.

Virat shrugged. "It cracks," he said as he bit down on the grain.

"Keep chewing." After a bit Anup asked again, "What do you think now?"

"Soft," said Virat. "Mushy."

Anup smiled. "First the crack, then the soft. That means the wheat is ready for harvest."

Anup pointed out past a row of waving coconut trees. "That field over there is a good one. So is the one on the other side of it. We will harvest those fields first."

"And this field where we stand?" Virat asked.

"Not so good. Many weeds here. Takes too much work to get too little grain. This field we will leave for last."

Without another word, Anup turned and headed back through the wheat field. Virat followed behind him. "If the landlord does not bring my son to me quickly," Virat stated, "I will take my wife and go for the boy myself. I will—"

Anup jumped at Virat. Before Virat could think, Anup grabbed him and threw him backward to the ground with such force that it knocked the breath out of Virat. Gasping, he did his best to kick and struggle, but Anup straddled him and held him to the ground in an iron grip.

"You would kill me for speaking against the landlord?" Virat cried.

"No," Anup said as he loosened his grip. He pointed toward the trampled wheat. There, its long body stretched high and its hood spread wide, a cobra swayed. Through yellow slits of eyes, it stared straight at Virat.

Virat sat up and ran his hand through his hair. "I didn't even see it!"

"Back away," Anup urged.

But Virat sat motionless, staring at the spotted hood of the snake. "Feet markings of the god Krishna," he breathed. "This snake—the Brahmin sent it. It is his curse on me."

Virat said nothing of the cobra to Latha. What purpose would it serve to trouble her further?

When Latha finally managed to leave the harvest sheds and head back to their hut, the sky already glowed with streaks of orange and pink. In the gathering dusk she lay wood in the cook pit and started a fire. In huts all around them, women were doing the same. Latha didn't say she had stolen every possible moment to stare down the road for a cloud of dust that might be the bullock cart, but Virat knew she had. She didn't say that again this day the landowner had not brought Ashish back to them, though Virat knew he had not. Latha put a handful of rice in the pot to boil along with dried onions and hot peppers. When the rice was soft, she added a generous pinch of curry. She spooned out a good helping of the spiced rice for her husband's meal. Only after he had finished would she eat hers. Custom required it.

That night Virat spread their sleeping mats outside next to the hut, and they lay side by side watching the stars.

"Anup and Sethu have four daughters," Latha said.

"Yes," said Virat. "I saw them today."

"Every day Devi, the oldest one, works in the landlord's garden. Lidya, the second one, cooks and gathers firewood."

"Yes."

"Lidya saw my scarred face," Latha said. "She asked me if boiling rice spilled on me. She has a scar on her face, too, and also one on her hand. Poor little child."

"I didn't notice."

"She also walks with a limp, that one. Once a cow trod on her small foot and crushed it."

Virat had not noticed that either. He had not really looked at Anup's older daughters. For several minutes, both he and Latha were silent.

"Do you think Ashish will have to work here?" Latha asked.

"I don't know. Not until his body has healed. Not until then."

For several minutes they lay in silence. Then, with an urgency that frightened Virat, Latha whispered, "We must not stay here, Husband."

"What?"

"We must get our son and go back to our mud hut on the far edge of the village."

Virat said nothing. How could he tell Latha that they could not go back? How could he explain that they now belonged to the landowner, like his ox and his buffalo? That their new master could keep them or sell them, work them or kill them? How could Virat possibly tell his wife that they were now the landowner's slaves?