In the Shadow of a Dream
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Authors: Sharad Keskar
In the Shadow of a Dream
by Sharad Keskar
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Published by AuthorHouse
7/31/12
ISBN: 978-1-4772-1531-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4772-1532-6 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4772-1533-3 (e)
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To Frances
With deep affection
&
To my Parents
To whom I owe my love for English Literature
Guildenstern
.
The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
Hamlet.
A dream itself is but a shadow.
Rosencrantz.
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
Contents
H
e promised to marry her and to take her back with him to England after the War. But he was killed in Burma. It was 1942. She was young, trusting, and when she realised she was pregnant, the unhappy woman left her nursing post at the Military Hospital in Basirabad and decided to return to her parents in Goa. Then in panic and afraid to face them, she thought it better to wait till after her child was born. It was a difficult and painful birth; the trauma of it, and the desolation of her situation, drove her to distraction. In no fit state to travel, she took her child and boarded a train. It was the wrong train. Sick and distraught, she got down when, two hours later, it stopped at a siding. The child began to cry. Mechanically she fed him and helplessly watched the train leave. She shivered and sobbed bitterly. The only other person at the siding was a man. He moved towards her but stopped when she sprang up with a sharp cry. Wide-eyed and afraid, she pressed her child to her breast and waved a hand frantically at him. He shrugged, turned back, picked up a wheel-barrow and slowly disappeared behind a shed. The woman rocked as she began to hum a lullaby. Then a sudden calm overcame her. She wrapped her boy-child in her shawl and walked the two miles of the dusty track that led to the gate of a walled village. There, on the worn steps of the Temple to Vishnu, she abandoned her child. And in the gathering smoky darkness, ran out into the unremitting isolation of the Thar Desert…
Snaking its way through the Aravalli hills, the railway track enters the hot plains of Southern Rajasthan, where the land is too barren for cities. But small villages mottle the sandy landscape near oases and alongside shallow man-made lakes. Here living is possible, though not without the obscene contrast of privilege and poverty—often a feature of Rajput villages owned by those few landlords, related to or employed by the local Rajas. But Rajputs are an ancient people, too Hindu for envy, too proud to beg, and too steeped in feudal custom and tradition to seek change.
Railway travellers, through this area of sandstorms and heat haze, on their way to Baroda from Jaipur, could miss the ancient walled village of Fatehpur, appearing, as it does, suddenly round a bend and as suddenly disappearing behind a spur of high ground. Its yellow sandstone walls are of the same colour as the silent, barren wasteland in which it is cradled. But twice each day that dun monochrome is broken. At dawn, the procession of women, in brightly coloured tight bodices and full skirts of gaudy cotton prints, pour out of the main gate; and the village comes to life like an unexpected flash flood. They come to fetch water from the lake outside the village walls; a lake hidden from view by a series of earth dams, which hide a mango grove and fertile fields beyond.
The women carry earthen-ware pitchers or shining brass ones, balanced with easy grace on their sullen heads. Then at sunset, accompanied by children, they go out to the lake again, to bathe and wash clothes. But the trains, which daily pass by at noon and midnight, miss the glorious technicolour of these spectacles and the six hundred and fifty-nine inhabitants of Fatehpur remain a hidden people. This is not deliberate, because every afternoon, at a time when their elders snatch brief siestas, children are to be seen on the ramparts waving to the goods train as its iron wagons go clattering by. They are children of better off parents, though, even for them, such displays of spontaneous enthusiasm are stolen moments before they gather under a banyan tree to recite lessons in word and number, led by a middle-aged, bearded man, wearing a white cloth cap and whom they address as “masterji”. In those same hot hours of the day, the children of the poor and destitute work in the fields and manure pits outside the village walls. From their number, the lucky hand-picked ones, armed with slings and pebbles, have the task of shooing birds away to protect the precious crops. They are hired for a pittance by caretaker-farmers who live in huts perched on stilts over fields owned by the two wealthiest landlords: Motilal, the village headman and the even richer
bunnia
or merchant, Seth Lala Murari.
The Sitasar, as the lake is called, is greatly valued. Every year on the eve of
Holi,
that riotous spring festival
,
the
pujari
or high priest and two assistants chant hymns and prayers by the lakeside
mandir
and make thank offerings of flowers, coconuts and incense to Lord Rama. The offerings are then taken in procession to the sound of bells and drums and thrown into the great
Holika
bonfire that has been lit outside the Maha Narayan Temple. Local legend has it that when Sita, Lord Rama’s wife, was abducted by the demon Ravana, who carried her off in his flying chariot, one of her sandals fell to earth and where it landed the ground wept. The tears collected to form a pool, giving credence to the fact that the water is brackish. Then, in the twelfth century, the pool was deepened and extended into a lake by Jai Singh, one of the generals of the princely state of Dinapur. He built dams, landscaped the fields behind it and planted mango trees below the high ground. Today, that mango grove, along with the sugarcane, sorghum and maize fields are a source of Lala Murari’s wealth. Beyond his fields is also a grove of
mohwa
trees and a secret distillery, where cane juice and the
mohwa
berries are used to make an intoxicating rum-like spirit. But by employing six
Bhil
tribesmen to work the stills, Murari caused much consternation in the village. For ages Fatehpuris have avoided contact with their
Bhil
neighbours for reasons of caste and because they take pride in having a temple dedicated to Vishnu, a god they consider far superior to the household gods that the
Bhils
worship with wild ritual and superstition.
Four
Bhil
settlements are within a radius of twenty miles from Fatehpur, but apart from the hamlet of Bodi, they are little more than a wretched collection of mud huts. The
panchayat
, Fatehpur’s governing body, discouraged having
Bhils
in their midst by banning the sale of
daru
or spirits within the village walls. But they were helpless to prevent Murari setting up a canteen near the railway station. Murari managed to secure a licence from the State Government for his distillery and got permission to build an ice and soda-water factory. Liquor, in poor hardworking communities is an irresistible temptation, and the elders faced a losing battle. They hoped that when the State Government’s impending prohibition laws came into force, Murari’s business would collapse. They were to be disappointed. Murari threatened to renege on the contract that had given him a monopoly over the production of gram, ground-nuts and sesame seed. The economy of Fatehpur relied heavily on his commerce. It was blackmail and gave the village headman, Motilal, no option but to co-operate. And so, even before State Prohibition arrived, Murari had ensured for himself a growing and productive market.
Seven miles away, among the low hills on the Eastern horizon, the river Kunti, a small seasonal stream, becomes a dry course in summer and a stagnant, shallow lake in the June to August season of rains. During the building of the Sitasar dams, Jai Singh’s workers discovered the spring, which had subterranean links with the Kunti, but they decided it unwise to destroy the myth of the Sitasar. Besides, they could not explain why the water in the large well outside the village, used for irrigating the fields and also fed by the Kunti, is sweet, while that of the Sitasar is both brackish and undrinkable. The mystery of the myth remains.
In the village itself, drinking water is drawn from two small wells, and a nominal annual tax, based on each householder’s ability to pay, is levied for their upkeep. The wells are kept covered and padlocked and sentries, appointed by the
panchayat,
supervise the strict rationing of water. Every morning, between the hours of eight and ten, the wells are opened for the daily ration of one large pitcher-full per person. No one complains. Water is precious and made sacred by the temple authorities, who have proclaimed that anyone who took more than the allotted share will bring upon the village a curse and a punishment from the gods: the drying up of the wells.