The Hope of Shridula (22 page)

Long into the night, Ashish and Shridula sat together beside Zia as the healer chanted one mantra after another. Then he suddenly stopped. "No more," the healer said. "The poison is too stubborn. She will leave this life."

Shridula threw her
pallu
over her head and sobbed. Ashish longed to console her, but he had no words of comfort in him.

"Your mother was good and kind," Ashish finally managed to say. "If there is any rebirth, she will live again as something good." His voice broke. He pulled off his
chaddar
and sobbed into it.

"I do not want her to be reborn," Shridula insisted. "I want her to go to heaven and live with God."

Ashish shook his head. "I cannot understand. She helped the scavenger woman take rice from the storehouse, yes. But not for herself. She took it for the starving woman and her son. Even so, a sin is a sin. An Untouchable must never steal from a high caste landlord. Did the gods send the cobra to punish her?"

"No,
Appa.
No!"

"But the landlord could not put an evil spell on us . . . Could he? He is not even a Brahmin!"

"Please,
Appa!"
Shridula pleaded.

Ashish picked up his
chaddar
and wiped his red eyes. "I will go to Master Landlord and demand that he tell me what he did. And if he will not tell me, I will—"

"
Appa,
be careful," Shridula pleaded. "Maybe it is better not to know."

24

February 1947

I
t is the Muslim League and the Indian Congress, too," Glory Anna told Shridula. "Both are insisting that all the castes should be equal."

Shridula, who had gotten up early from her sleeping mat to gather twigs and tie a new broom, was too busy sweeping out the room to pay much attention to Glory Anna's chatter.

"Do you understand what that means, Shridula? No difference between you and me!"

Ignoring the splinters in her hands, Shridula swept the dust out the door.

"I told you to lay out my yellow
sari,
not this blue one!" Glory Anna called after her.

Shridula hurried back inside, apologizing all the way. She scooped the fresh folds of blue silk from the bed and refolded it, hurried it back into the cupboard, and took out the yellow
sari.

"You can finish that tiresome sweeping later. I want you to brush my hair and dress me."

Shridula set the broom aside and took up the silver brush. Gently she pulled it through Glory Anna's long hair, taking great care not to pull too hard.

"Untouchables should be an equal part of Indian society the same as the rest of us," Glory Anna stated. "You should be able to go everywhere I go and do everything I do. Would that not be good?"

Shridula smiled a patient smile. Of course, it would be good. But who would sweep the floor? And care for the clothes? And brush the mistress's hair? If all castes were the same, masters couldn't be masters any longer, for who would be their servants?

Brahmin Rama sat cross-legged on a straw mat spread out under the mango tree in front of his house. He pushed his wire-rimmed spectacles back on his nose and called out in a loud voice, "My spiritual journey to the holy Ganges proved to be a time of immense enlightenment. I learned many things of great importance to all of us who share this village. In fact, I have an entirely new understanding of matters vital to all who will share the new country of independent India!"

Several men slowed their steps along the road, then stopped to listen. Spice merchant Mani Rao, eldest son of Irfan Rao, closed up the tops of his sacks of spices and edged over as close as he dared. Other Brahmins in the settlement called to their sons and nephews to come and hear the words of the wise Brahmin who had personally walked the
Pancho-kos
road, recited mantras in the Golden Temple, and dipped his head into the sacred water of the Ganges.

"In the new, independent India, there will be room for everyone—all castes and all religions."

"What are you saying?" a man called out from beside the road. "I do not eat meat! Why should I mix with men who do?"

"I will not even eat vegetables grown in the ground," shouted another. "How many others can claim such purity?"

"My clothes are spotless," an aged Brahmin intoned. "And my mind is as clean as my clothes."

"Yes, yes!" Brahmin Rama quickly agreed. "A Brahmin must unfailingly uphold the code of purity. Clean and unclean can never be one."

"Not just Brahmins!" shouted the spice merchant.

Brahmin Rama cleared his throat. "No, certainly not. All upper castes." He looked at the raised eyebrows on the Brahmin next to him. Rama took a deep breath and pushed the spectacles back up on his perspiring nose. "But led by the Brahmins, of course. Yes, led by the Brahmins, all upper castes will uphold the code of purity in the new India where there will be room for all."

"There is room for all right now," the Brahmin next to him said. "Each caste has its own place. The system has worked quite well for thousands of years."

"Once the British are gone, it will work even better," Brahmin Rama said. "It is up to us, the upper castes, to see that it does."

"The Punjab, Husband! You know nothing of that province. It is my people who know it because it is their land!" Amina's voice echoed loudly throughout the landlord's house.

Glory Anna didn't hurry to close her door the way she usually did when Amina and Rajeev raised their voices to each other. Instead, she pushed the window shutters wide open so she could hear more clearly.

"What I do know is that the Muslim League is doing all it can to gain power there," Rajeev said. "While true Indians sacrifice everything for a free and united India, the Muslim League stirs up division. Muslims against Hindus. Muslims against Sikhs—"

"And everyone against Muslims!"

"Do you not see, Wife? The League's demands will be the death of a united India!"

Stomping . . . slamming . . . but no more shouted words.

Glory Anna looked at Shridula and made a face. "Ha! A Christian and a Muslim in a Hindu country. Rajeev and Amina were supposed to be the picture of a new, united India."

Shridula said nothing.

In the cool of the late afternoon, Brahmin Rama looked around him at the small clutch of Brahmin boys who sat at rapt attention under the mango tree. "With my own eyes, I saw Mahatma Gandhi," he told them. "With my own ears, I heard the Great Soul speak."

The Brahmin spoke in an unusually loud voice, glancing up periodically to see if more villagers would come back and linger behind the boys to listen.

"Imagine!" exclaimed one of the few men who had stopped. "In our own village sits one who saw the great Gandhiji! One who heard words of wisdom straight from the Mahatma's mouth!"

Brahmin Rama, flushed with pride but pretending not to hear, continued to speak: "Of course, I would not presume to touch the Mahatma. He is only a Vaisya."

A hushed silence fell over the small assembly. A thin man near the front, a merchant and himself a member of the lesser Vaisya caste, ventured, "Even so, he is the great Mahatma."

"I fear that Mahatma Gandhi understands little of India's true history, and even less of the ancient texts," Brahmin Rama said.

The entire group caught its collective breath in a shocked gasp.

Rama quickly added, "Not from caste alone, you understand. No, mostly from living too long among the British."

"But, Brahmin," the thin man pushed, "we hear it said that all of India follows the Great Soul."

With a nervous hand, Brahmin Rama wiped perspiration from his forehead and once again pushed at his spectacles. "Mohandas Gandhi entreats us to accept outcastes as our equals," he said carefully. "The very same outcastes he describes as social lepers. When you say all of India follows him I must ask you: follows him where?"

"Do not tell me what you will do or where you will go!" Rajeev's angry words rolled from the back of the house, under Glory Anna's door and through her open window. "You are my wife. You will do as I say and you will go where I send you!"

"Maybe I do not want to get married," Glory Anna said quietly to Shridula.

"Maybe a new India put together like Rajeev put his family together would be even worse than the old India," Shridula suggested.

The voices stopped abruptly. Only the wail of a child echoed through the window.

"Everyone the same . . ." Shridula mused. "How could that work? Amina is a Muslim and a woman. Of course she wants to be equal to her Hindu husband. But Rajeev has all the power. He would not want to give that up. How can the weak be equally strong unless the strong agree to be equally weak?"

"Yes," Glory Anna mused. "I would not mind if you lived like me, but I would never want to live like you."

More villagers pressed in around Brahmin Rama, each with a question on his lips. Did the Mahatma really dress like a poverty-stricken Indian peasant? Was it true that he walked the width and breadth of the country? Would he come to Malabar? Did he say how soon he would force the British to leave India? Always, after each question, the people called out the same refrain:
Give us the answer in Gandhiji's exact words!

To Brahmin Rama's troubled amazement, the villagers did not echo his criticisms of Mohandas Gandhi. Whatever the Mahatma's words, the villagers insisted their own opinion matched it exactly.

"So, then, does the Mahatma really say all castes should be considered equal?" a merchant near the back called out.

Brahmin Rama took a deep breath. "No, no! Not that way. The Great Soul says a scavenger must forever do the work of a scavenger, which is precisely my opinion." Rama straightened his back, and, with a voice now strong and even, declared, "I heard the Mahatma speak, and I can tell you honestly that in every way he is a Hindu of Hindus."

From the back of the crowd, next to the road, a voice challenged, "Is that so? Even with all the influence of the West on him?"

A startled look crossed Brahmin Rama's face. He searched the growing clusters of villagers for the speaker.

"Would a 'Hindu of Hindus in every way' insist on loving the most impure and cursed of creatures?" the speaker asked.

Ah, yes. Brahmin Rama clearly recognized the rude speaker as none other than Rajeev, son of landowner Saji Varghese. But before the Brahmin could fully piece his thoughts together and come up with a coherent response, Rajeev started in again: "Care for the poor. Respond to violence with nonviolence. All this sounds much more Christian than Hindu."