He shifted the folder to the other hand. “No, sister, it isn’t. I have come for your reply to the landlord’s letter.”
“I see. Wait one minute.” She shut the door and went to look for the unopened envelope. “Where did I put it?” she whispered to the tailors.
The three searched through the jumble of things on the table. She found herself watching Omprakash, the way his fingers clutched and his hands moved. His bony angularity no longer disturbed her. She was discovering a rare birdlike beauty in him.
Ishvar came upon the envelope under a stack of cloth. She tore it open and read — quickly, the first time, then slowly, to penetrate the legal jargon. The gist of it soon became clear: the running of a business was prohibited on residential premises, she must cease her commercial activities immediately or face eviction.
Cheeks flushing, she raced to the door. “What kind of nonsense is this? Tell your landlord his harassment won’t work!”
Ibrahim sighed, lifted his shoulders and raised his voice. “You have been warned, Mrs. Dalai! Breaking the rules will not be tolerated! Next time there will be no nice letter but a notice to vacate! Don’t think that-”
She slammed the door. He stopped shouting immediately, relieved to be spared the full speech. Panting, he wiped his brow and left.
Dina read the letter again, dismayed. Barely three weeks with the tailors and trouble already with the landlord. She wondered if she should show it to Nusswan, ask his advice. No, she decided, he would make too much of it. Better to ignore it and continue discreetly.
She had no choice now but to take the tailors further into her confidence, impress on them how essential it was to keep the sewing a secret. She discussed the matter with Ishvar.
They agreed on the fiction to be used if the rent-collector ever confronted the two coming to or going from the flat. They would tell him that they came to do her cooking and cleaning.
Omprakash was insulted. “I am a tailor, not her maaderchod servant who sweeps and mops,” he said after they left work that evening.
“Don’t be childish, Om. It’s just a story to prevent trouble with the landlord.”
“Trouble for whom? For her. Why should I worry? We don’t even get a fair rate from her. If we are dead tomorrow, she will get two new tailors.”
“Will you forever speak without thinking? If she is kicked out of her flat, we have no place to work. What’s the matter with you? This is our first decent job since we came to the city.”
“And I should rejoice for that? Is this job going to make everything all right for us?”
“But it’s only been three weeks. Patience, Om. There is lots of opportunity in the city, you can make your dreams come true.”
“I am sick of the city. Nothing but misery ever since we came. I wish I had died in our village. I wish I had also burned to death like the rest of my family.”
Ishvar’s face clouded, his disfigured cheek quivering with his nephew’s pain. He put his arm around his shoulder. “It will get better, Om,” he pleaded. “Believe me, it will get better. And we’ll soon go back to our village.”
III. In a Village by a River
IN THEIR VILLAGE, THE TAILORS used to be cobblers; that is, their family belonged to the Chamaar caste of tanners and leather-workers. But long ago, long before Omprakash was born, when his father, Narayan, and his uncle, Ishvar, were still young boys of ten and twelve, the two were sent by their father to be apprenticed as tailors.
Their father’s friends feared for the family. “Dukhi Mochi has gone mad,” they lamented. “With wide-open eyes he is bringing destruction upon his household.” And consternation was general throughout the village: someone had dared to break the timeless chain of caste, retribution was bound to be swift.
Dukhi Mochi’s decision to turn his sons into tailors was indeed courageous, considering that the prime of his own life had been spent in obedient compliance with the traditions of the caste system. Like his forefathers before him, he had accepted from childhood the occupation preordained for his present incarnation.
Dukhi Mochi was five years old when he had begun to learn the Chamaar vocation at his father’s side. With a very small Muslim population in the area, there was no slaughterhouse nearby where the Chamaars could obtain hides. They had to wait until a cow or buffalo died a natural death in the village. Then the Chamaars would be summoned to remove the carcass. Sometimes the carcass was given free, sometimes they had to pay, depending on whether or not the animal’s upper-caste owner had been able to extract enough free labour from the Chamaars during the year.
The Chamaars skinned the carcass, ate the meat, and tanned the hide, which was turned into sandals, whips, harnesses, and waterskins. Dukhi learned to appreciate how dead animals provided his family’s livelihood. And as he mastered the skills, imperceptibly but relentlessly Dukhi’s own skin became impregnated with the odour that was part of his father’s smell, the leather-worker’s stink that would not depart even after he had washed and scrubbed in the all-cleansing river.
Dukhi did not realize his pores had imbibed the fumes till his mother, hugging him one day, wrinkled her nose and said, her voice a mix of pride and sorrow, “You are becoming an adult, my son, I can sniff the change.”
For a while afterwards, he was constantly lifting his forearm to his nose to see if the odour still lingered. He wondered if flaying would get rid of it. Or did it go deeper than skin? He pricked himself to smell his blood but the test was inconclusive, the little ruby at his fingertip being an insufficient sample. And what about muscle and bone, did the stink lurk in them too? Not that he wanted it gone; he was happy then to smell like his father.
Besides tanning and leather-working, Dukhi learned what it was to be a Chamaar, an untouchable in village society. No special instruction was necessary for this part of his education. Like the filth of dead animals which covered him and his father as they worked, the ethos of the caste system was smeared everywhere. And if that was not enough, the talk of adults, the conversations between his mother and father, filled the gaps in his knowledge of the world.
The village was by a small river, and the Chamaars were permitted to live in a section downstream from the Brahmins and landowners. In the evening, Dukhi’s father sat with the other Chamaar men under a tree in their part of the settlement, smoking, talking about the day that was ending and the new one that would dawn tomorrow. Bird cries fluttered around their chitchat. Beyond the bank, cooking smoke signalled hungry messages while upper- caste waste floated past on the sluggish river.
Dukhi watched from a distance, waiting for his father to come home. As the dusk deepened, the men’s outlines became vague. Soon Dukhi could see only the glowing tips of their beedis, darting around like fireflies with the movement of their hands. Then the burning tips went dark, one by one, and the men dispersed.
While Dukhi’s father ate, he repeated for his wife everything he had learned that day. “The Pandit’s cow is not healthy. He is trying to sell it before it dies.”
“Who gets it if it dies? Is it your turn yet?”
“No, it is Bhola’s turn. But where he was working, they accused him of stealing. Even if the Pandit lets him have the carcass, he will need my help — they chopped off his left-hand fingers today.”
“Bhola is lucky,” said Dukhi’s mother. “Last year Chhagan lost his hand at the wrist. Same reason.”
Dukhi’s father took a drink of water and swirled it around in his mouth before swallowing. He ran the back of his hand across his lips. “Dosu got a whipping for getting too close to the well. He never learns.” Eating in silence for a while, he listened to the frogs bellowing in the humid night, then asked his wife, “You are not having anything?”
“It’s my fasting day.” In her code, it meant there wasn’t enough food.
Dukhi’s father nodded, taking another mouthful. “Have you seen Buddhu’s wife recently?”
She shook her head. “Not since many days.”
