though its length and shape had conformed to caste rules, its tips humbly drooping downwards unlike proud upper- caste moustaches that flourished skywards. He dressed himself and the children in the filthiest rags he could find among their meagre possessions. To avoid charges of pollution, he told Roopa not to appear anywhere in the vicinity of the village well; her friend Padma fetched their drinking water. Whatever task Dukhi was ordered to do, he did without questioning, without thought of payment, keeping his eyes averted from the high-caste face and fixed safely on the feet. He knew that the least annoyance someone felt towards him could be fanned into flames to devour his family.
Fortunately, the majority of the upper castes were content to wax philosophic about the problem of fallow wombs and leave it at that. They said it was obvious the world was passing through Kaliyug, through the Age of Darkness, and sonless wives were not the only aberration in the cosmic order. “Witness the recent drought,” they said. “A drought that came even though we performed all the correct pujas. And when the rains fell, they fell in savage torrents; remember the floods, the huts that were washed away. And what about the two-headed calf in the neighbouring district?”
No one in the village had seen the two-headed calf, for the distance was great, and it was not possible to make the journey and return by nightfall to the safety of their huts. But they had all heard about the monstrous birth. “Yes, yes,” they agreed. “The Pandits are absolutely correct. It is Kaliyug that is the cause of our troubles.”
The remedy, the Pandits advised, was to be more vigilant in the observance of the dharmic order. There was a proper place for everyone in the world, and as long as each one minded his place, they would endure and emerge unharmed through the Darkness of Kaliyug. But if there were transgressions — if the order was polluted — then there was no telling what calamities might befall the universe.
After this consensus was reached, the village saw a sharp increase in the number of floggings meted out to members of the untouchable castes, as the Thakurs and Pandits tried to whip the world into shape. The crimes were varied and imaginative: a Bhunghi had dared to let his unclean eyes meet Brahmin eyes; a Chamaar had walked on the wrong side of the temple road and defiled it; another had strayed near a puja that was in progress and allowed his undeserving ears to overhear the sacred shlokas; a Bhunghi child had not erased her footprints cleanly from the dust in a Thakur’s courtyard after finishing her duties there — her plea that her broom was worn thin was unacceptable.
Dukhi contributed some of his skin, too, in wrestling the universe out of the clutches of Darkness. He was summoned to graze a herd of goats. The owner was going to be away from the village during the day. “Watch them carefully,” said the man, “especially that one with the broken horn and long beard. He is a real devil.” A glass of goat’s milk was promised in return for the work.
Dukhi spent the morning minding the herd, dreaming about the pleasure Ishvar and Narayan would get from the milk. But as the day wore on and the afternoon grew hot, he fell asleep. The scrabbling animals strayed onto a neighbour’s property. When the owner returned in the evening, instead of a glass of goat’s milk, Dukhi got a thrashing.
It was a small price to pay, he felt, considering what the consequence might have been had it taken the man’s fancy. That night, Roopa crept out to steal butter to apply to the welts raised on her husband’s back and shoulders.
Butter was something Roopa could steal without a second thought. In fact, she did not even consider it stealing. After all, hadn’t Lord Krishna himself made a full-time job of it during his adolescence, aeons ago, in Mathura?
At the appropriate age, Dukhi began teaching his sons the skills of the trade to which they were born shackled. Ishvar was seven when he was taken to his first dead animal. Narayan wanted to go as well, but Dukhi said it was not time for him, he was still too young. He promised the child that he would be allowed to help with tasks like salting the skin, scraping off hair and bits of rotten flesh with a dull knife, and collecting the fruit of the myrobalan tree to tan the hide. This cheered Narayan up.
Dukhi and Ishvar arrived with a few other Chamaars at Thakur Premji’s farm, and were taken to the field where the buffalo lay. An egret was perched on the dark mound, picking insects from the skin. It flew off when the men approached. Clouds of flies buzzed over the animal.
“Is it dead?” asked Dukhi.
“Of course it’s dead,” said the Thakur’s man. “You think we can afford to give away live cattle?” Shaking his head and muttering about the stupidity of these achhoot jatis, he left them to their work.
Dukhi and his friends positioned their cart behind the buffalo; a wooden plank was sloped from the cartbed to the animal. They grabbed its legs and began inching its hulk up the plank, keeping the wood wet so the weight might slide a little more readily.
“Look!” said one of them. “It’s alive, it’s breathing!”
“Aray Chhotu, not so loud,” said Dukhi. “Or they won’t let us take it. Anyway, it’s almost dead — a few more hours at best.”
They resumed the task, sweating and grunting, while Chhotu cursed the Thakur softly. “Bastard hypocrite. Making us break our backs. Would be so much easier to kill it, skin the carcass right here, chop it into small hunks.”
“That’s true,” said Dukhi. “But how can Mr. High-Caste Shit permit that? The purity of his land would be spoilt.”
“The only thing high caste about him is his little meat-eating lund,” said Chhotu. “It feeds on his wife’s high- caste choot every night.”
The men chuckled, then renewed their efforts. Someone said, “He has been seen in the town once a week. Gobbling chicken, mutton, beef, whatever he likes.”
“They are all like that,” said Dukhi. “Vegetarian in public, meat-eaters in private. Come on, push!”
Ishvar paid close attention to the men’s conversation, joining in the effort with his little hands, as the men encouraged him. “Now we will succeed! Push, Ishvar, push! Harder, harder!”
Amid the joking and cursing and teasing, the buffalo suddenly came alive, raising its head one last time before expiring. The adults shouted in surprise and jumped back to avoid the horns. But the tip caught Ishvar’s left cheek, stunning him. He collapsed.
Dukhi grabbed the boy in his arms and began running to his hut. His legs swallowed the distance in urgent gulps. The stunted noonday shadow of their joined figures clung faithfully to his heels. Sweat poured from his brow, sprinkling his son’s face. Ishvar stirred then, and his tongue emerged and tasted his father’s salt at his lips. Dukhi breathed easier, heartened by the sign of life.
“Hai Bhagwan!” screamed Roopa when she saw her bleeding son. “Aray father-of-Ishvar, what did you do to my child! What-all was the big rush to take him today? Such a little boy! You couldn’t wait till he was older?”
“He is seven,” Dukhi answered quietly. “My father took me at five.”
“That’s a reason? And if you were injured and killed at five, you would do the same to your son?”
“If I were killed at five, I wouldn’t have a son,” said Dukhi, even more quietly. He went out to collect the leaves that would heal the wound, and chopped them very fine, till they were almost a paste. Then he returned to work.
Roopa bathed the gash and wrapped the dark-green ointment over it. Afterwards, when she was calmer, her fury at Dukhi subsided. She tied protective amulets to her children’s arms, reasoning that it was the evil eye of the Brahmin women that had hurt Ishvar.
And the childless women were also reassured: the universe was returning to normal; the untouchable boy was no longer fair of face but disfigured, which was as it should be.
Dukhi came home in the evening and lowered himself to the floor in the corner which was his eating place. Ishvar and Narayan snuggled close to him, enjoying the smell of the beedi smoke that clung to his breath, temporarily diluting the stench of hides and tannin and offal. The fragrance of the baking dough made them hungry, as Roopa rolled out fresh chapatis.
The wound festered for a few days before starting to heal, and soon there was no cause for worry. The injury, however, left that part of Ishvar’s face forever frozen. His father said, trying to make light of it, “God wants my son to cry only half as much as other mortals.”
He preferred to overlook the fact that Ishvar’s smile, too, could only be smiled with half his face.
