“You Chamaar rascals! Very brave you are getting, daring to enter the school!” He twisted their ears till they yelped with pain and started to cry. The schoolchildren fearfully huddled together.
“Is this what your parents teach you? To defile the tools of learning and knowledge? Answer me! Is it?” He released their ears long enough to deliver stinging blows to the head, then seized them again.
Sobbing, Ishvar said, “No, masterji, it isn’t.”
“Then why were you in there?”
“We only wanted to look — ”
“Wanted to look! Well, I will show you now! I will show you the back of my hand!” Holding on to Narayan, he slapped Ishvar six times in quick succession across the face, then delivered the same number to his brother’s face. “And what is this on your foreheads, you shameless creatures? Such blasphemy!” He slapped them again, and by now his hand was sore.
“Get the cane from the cupboard,” he ordered a girl. “And you two remove your pants. After I am through, not one of you achhoot boys will ever dream of fooling with things you are not supposed to touch.”
The cane was presented, and the teacher asked four older students to hold the trespassers to the ground, face down, by their hands and ankles. He commenced the punishment, alternating strokes between the two. The watching children flinched each time the cane landed on the bare bottoms. A little boy started to cry.
When the two had received a dozen strokes each, the teacher stopped. “That should teach you,” he panted. “Now get out, and don’t let your unclean faces be seen here ever again.”
Ishvar and Narayan ran off with their pants straggling, stumbling and tripping comically. The other children grabbed the opportunity to laugh; they were grateful for the relief it provided.
Dukhi did not hear till evening about his sons’ punishment. He grimly told Roopa to delay baking the chapatis. “Why?” she asked, alarmed. “After a whole day in the fields you are not hungry? Where-all are you going?”
“To Pandit Lalluram. He must do something about this.”
“Leave it for now,” she pleaded. “Don’t disturb such an important man at dinnertime.” But Dukhi washed the day’s dust off his hands and went.
Pandit Lalluram was not just any Brahmin, he was a Chit-Pavan Brahmin — descended from the purest among the pure, from the keepers of the Sacred Knowledge. He was neither the village headman nor a government official, but his peers said he commanded their unswerving respect for his age, his sense of fairness, and for the Sacred Knowledge locked inside his large, shiny cranium.
Disputes of any sort, over land or water or animals, were presented before him for arbitration. Family quarrels concerning disobedient daughters-in-law, stubborn wives, and philandering husbands also fell within his jurisdiction. Thanks to his impeccable credentials, everyone always went away satisfied: the victim obtained the illusion of justice; the wrongdoer was free to continue in his old ways; and Pandit Lalluram, for his trouble, received gifts of cloth, grain, fruit, and sweets from both sides.
The learned Pandit also enjoyed a reputation for promoting communal harmony. For instance, during the periodic protests against Muslims and cow slaughter, Pandit Lalluram persuaded his coreligionists that it was not right for Hindus to condemn the cow-eaters. He explained that the Muslim, by his religion, was burdened with four wives, poor fellow, and he needed to eat the flesh of animals to heat up his blood and service those four wives — he was carnivorous out of necessity, not out of fondness for cow flesh or to harass Hindus, and, as such, should be pitied and left in peace to satisfy his religious requirements.
With his spotless record, Pandit Lalluram’s champions were many. So honest and fair was he, they said, even an untouchable could receive justice at his hands. That no untouchable could verify this claim in living memory was beside the point. People seemed to remember, vaguely, the time a landlord had beaten a Bhunghi to death for arriving late at the house, well after sunrise, to cart away the household’s excrement. Pandit Lalluram had ruled — or it might have been his father, or perhaps his grandfather; in any case, someone had ruled — that the offence was serious, but not serious enough to warrant the killing, and that the landlord, in recompense, must provide food, shelter, and clothing for the dead man’s wife and children for the next six years. Or was it for six months, or perhaps six weeks?
Relying on this legendary reputation for justice, Dukhi sat at Pandit Lalluram’s feet and told him about the beating of Ishvar and Narayan. The learned man was resting in an armchair, having just finished his dinner, and belched loudly several times during his visitor’s narration. Dukhi paused politely at each eructation, while Pandit Lalluram murmured “Hai Ram” in thanks for an alimentary tract blessed with such energetic powers of digestion.
“How much he slapped my sons — you should see their swollen faces, Panditji,” said Dukhi. “And their backsides look like an angry tiger raked them with his claws.”
“Poor children,” sympathized Pandit Lalluram. He rose and went to a shelf inside. “Here, put this ointment on their backs. It will soothe the burning pain.”
Dukhi bowed his head. “Thank you, Panditji, you are truly kind.” He removed the cloth from his head and wrapped the small flat tin in it. “Panditji, some time ago I was hammered badly by Thakur Premji for no fault of mine. But I did not come to you. I did not want to trouble you.”
Pandit Lalluram raised his eyebrows and rubbed his big toe. Nodding, he kneaded sweat and dirt into black bits that rolled off his fingers.
“That time I suffered silently,” said Dukhi. “But for my children, I have come to you. They should not have to suffer unjust beatings.”
Still silent, Pandit Lalluram sniffed the fingers which had finished massaging his big toe. He pivoted on one buttock and broke wind. Dukhi leaned back to allow it free passage, wondering what penalty might adhere to the offence of interfering with the waft of brahminical flatus.
“They are only children,” he pleaded, “and they were doing no harm.” He waited for a response. “They were doing no harm, Panditji,” he repeated, wanting the learned man to at least agree with him. “That teacher should be punished for what he has done.”
Pandit Lalluram sighed long and hard. He leaned sideways and blew a thick stream of mucus out of his nose on to the dry earth. The impact of its landing raised a tiny puff of dust. He rubbed his nose and sighed again. “Dukhi Mochi, you are a good, hardworking man. I have known you for a long time. You always try to do your duty, don’t you, according to your caste?”
Dukhi nodded.
“Which is wise,” approved Pandit Lalluram, “for it is the path to happiness. Otherwise, there would be chaos in the universe. You understand there are four varnas in society: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra. Each of us belongs to one of these four varnas, and they cannot mix. Correct?”
Dukhi nodded again, hiding his impatience. He had not come to hear a lecture on the caste system.
“Now just as you, a leather-worker, have to do your dharmic duty towards your family and society, the teacher must do his. You would not deny that, would you, Dukhi?”
Dukhi shook his head.
“Punishing your sons for their misdeeds was part of the teacher’s duty. He had no choice. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Panditji, punishment is sometimes necessary. But such a terrible beating?”
“It was a terrible offence that they-”
“But they are only children, and curious, like all — ”
Pandit Lalluram rolled his eyes at the interruption, pointing heavenward with the index finger of his right hand to silence Dukhi. “How can I make you understand? You do not have the knowledge that would help you to appreciate these matters.” Now the note of patient suffering in his voice was replaced by something harsher. “Your children entered the classroom. They polluted the place. They touched instruments of learning. They defiled slates and chalks, which upper-caste children would touch. You are lucky there wasn’t a holy book like the Bhagavad Gita in that cupboard, no sacred texts. Or the punishment would have been more final.”
Dukhi was calm as he touched Pandit Lalluram’s sandals to take his leave. “I understand completely, Panditji, thank you for explaining to me. I am so lucky — you, a Chit-Pavan Brahmin, wasting precious time on an ignorant Chamaar like me.”
Pandit Lalluram absently lifted his hand in farewell. There was a small doubt in his mind as to whether he had been flattered or insulted. Presently, though, another vigorous belch came rumbling upwards, displacing the doubt
