(An English translation of Kanmani Gunasekaran’s Tamil novel “Vantharankudi”. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam)
Chapter 1
The land was covered in darkness. Trees and vines
remained motionless without a sign of placid wind. The descending, thick, white
layer of mist. The dew drops settling on the leaves, falling down from their
tips. Small ponds and waterholes lying in frozen silence with no ripples on
their surfaces. A profound silence with all living beings in their deep slumber.
The land began to
receive its first light as the east brightened up. The remains of darkness were
still lying like a poisonous mucous on a newborn calf. It was the time the
horizon was turning into a crimson hue with the urgency of a goat speeding to
clean up its calf. The birds had woken up…crowing of roosters…cawing of crows,
chirping of sparrows, and cacophony of billed babblers…The sounds of dawn
everywhere with their pairs and chicks in all the nests.
The soothing dawn
that ended its laziness in the petite moves of a swaying tiny branch that was
mildly flowing cool wind, in the golden hue of rolling grass tips, in the
blossoming buds of flowers, in the rings of humming, and in the ripples on
water surfaces. The layer of mist began to wane and disappeared. The light
started spreading around. The expanse of green pearl millet fields. Matured
grains were standing ready for harvest everywhere.
This soil is like
our mothers’ lap—undying love to feed every life with love.
Now, it was time
to search for food after the morning songs of the birds were over. The sparrows
flew away from their nests along with their chicks and descended on the pearl
millet fields.
…
“nthoo…nthoo” there emerged a sudden powerful bellow. Along with it came a
continuous sound of beating a tin sheet. The traumatised birds perching on the
pearl millet stalks flew away at once in the air, leaving the stalks to dance
without their weights. Bhooma Devi was running through it furiously, shooing
the birds away. The panicles at the top of the stalks hit her, shook a little
as she sped through, and pollen from the flowers that hadn’t yet fallen stuck
to her body. A couple of stems that fell on her way broke off.
The birds that
flew away as though going very far towards the south changed their direction
suddenly and descended like a hail of summer rain on a mango tree standing
near. She stood dumbfounded, seething with anger, helplessly watching her
furious chase and yells leave no effect on those birds.
Like a stone
thrown at ferociously, her eyes went to the mango tree standing beyond the
panicles that stood upright, grown above head. The birds perching on branches
behind the mango tree leaves were gawking at her like girls who, after
attaining puberty, would stare at people while sitting in a hut made of palm
stems.
As her fury and
the run in haste hadn’t yet slackened off, she was still gasping for breath.
Sweat grew sticky even in that chilly morning. Her skin with streaks of bruises
on her face, hands, and legs caused by the coarse pearl millet straws was
burning. The open collar-stiff of her men’s shirt gave her an acid-burning
sensation when it rubbed against the nape of her neck. Her throat seemed to
have choked with a wood piece as it grew dried up with incessant yells. She
moistened her throat with saliva by coughing up vigorously. For a moment, a
lorry that was passing by the Valaiyamadevi road obstructed the view of the sun
that rose in the east with its dense crimson hue beyond the pearl millet fields
that lay spread across as much as one’s eyes could see, and then offered it a
full view. The south Vellur’s pearl millet fields, which lay beyond the narrow
way leading to the western side of the village, were also wearing a pleasant,
calm look in that early morning.
All the fields had
similar mature panicles resembling the ropes that would get stiff after being
soaked in water. But in no field could one see such howls and jitters like
hers. Bhooma despised herself, looking at her fight with the petty birds in the
early morning with a meaningless apprehension that those birds, in flocks,
would take away her field along with its crop.
She also had the
same luxury of visiting her field like others under the early morning sun light
with a simple task of collecting grasses for calves. But the presence of a
Mango tree near the well, a couple of coconut trees adjacent to it, neem and
Morinda trees standing beyond the groundnut fields and the birds perching on
them were the real problems she faced in the early morning. For those birds,
reaching others’ fields meant some risks and efforts for they wouldn’t be able
to find a safer trees around to sit in case the owner shooed them off. They had
to fly a long distance to find suitable trees facing the risk of grains they
had eaten getting digested before they could reach there. So, no birds would
want to risk such an unproductive try. Even if they could find one or two tress
around those fields, they stood nowhere near to the luxury offered by Bhooma’s
field. Relaxed perching, hiding behind the trees found on the grounds, and
tanner’s cassia waterholes beyond the Aiyanar temple were true comforts they
got in her field.
She turned,
hearing a mild buzz in the mango tree branches. A couple of sparrows rose to
the mango tree, flew about to coconut trees, and goat foot creepers as though
performing a ramp walk when she had her attention somewhere for a while. Bhooma
summoned up all her strength in her body, jumped up, and shrieked in a high
pitch as if throwing her invective to the top of the trees. Not only her high-pitched
yells, but the rough noise from the tin sheet was also no way lesser in its
intensity that day. While jumping up, her right foot stumbled on a broken piece
of a stone, pricked painfully, and the dried-up throat due to continuous howls
gave her a burning sensation of having swallowed a chili paste. Though the
birds were not visibly afraid of her howling, they just left for mulberry
trees, leaving her some solace.
Seeing no birds
round, she returned to the shed with a peace of mind. Hearing some unusual
sound in the well, she went near the single hibiscus plant and looked into it.
The well, built with bricks, had a good amount of water up to a man’s height
below. A rat snake was trying to climb onto a coconut leaf stalk and frequently
slipping down. The tiny waves on the water surface were spreading in circles
with mild jerks. She lowered herself, picked a ball of mud, and threw it at it.
The snake jumped into the water in a second, swam with spine-breaking curves,
and hid in the cracks on the wall.
It was an old shed
built on an elevated mound of sand that was heaped and levelled when the well
was dug there. The doorway and the field in the front. She crossed the motor
engine and trench meant for keeping the water pump set, went in the front and
watched over north towards the village, and stood on a narrow way to see anyone
coming by that way. Not a fly or a crow was found around. The tips of the
chimneys of Neiveli’s first thermal power station were visible dimly far away
behind the village. The smoke emitted through its tips rose in thick and
monstrous proportion as though it was approaching her village, Veppankurichi,
after swallowing up Thandavankuppam and Mantharakuppam. Truly speaking,
everyone around there knew very well that the works towards making it a reality
had already begun.
Four or five years
ago, the authorities demarcated the land and marked it with flags in
Veppankurich, almost in haste, to take over the village to set up a second coal
mine. Then, they left the project in indefinite abeyance just before everything
was almost ripe except the issue of the land acquisition notice. Getting
extremely busy with the process of land acquisition and then suddenly dropping
the project are well-known tactics the government used to adopt to dilute the
mass unrest and prevailing disquiet among people. First they would leak out
some information about land acquisition. The people would then become anxious;
then the proposal would be lying like a stone thrown into the well for some
time. When people turn to their routine, completely oblivious of their anxiety
and acquisition, some guys would turn up suddenly to demarcate the land and
then disappear again, and so the projects. The people who refused to part even
a handful of soil from their land in the beginning would be mentally fatigued
finally as the time passed and be ready to give in to the demands.
What if they come
tomorrow to take away our land? This fear would force them not to engage in any
productive activity such as digging wells, purchasing lands, and constructing
houses on their lands. They would become mentally ready to give away their
lands themselves. Three-fourths of the Veppankurichichi’s populace were living
in this state of readiness. But Bhooma’s father, Rajapakkiyam, was still stubborn
that he would never part with his land under any circumstances. Leaving the
land where he was born, brought up, and toiled all through his life was simply
unthinkable in his life. His son, Sathasivan, who was working on contract in
the coal mine, had in mind just the opposite of what his father had. Whenever
Rajapakkiyam asked him to attend to the works on his field, Sathasivan would be
grossly irritated and hurl words at him irritatingly.
“It would be just
fine if these Neiveli blokes could just grab these lands at the earliest.
Wouldn’t? This useless man is pestering every time to work in the field.”
“Sell the land,
and spend that fucking four rupees to buy some masala snacks in a hotel, and
then sit on the road killing the flies for your meals,” Rajapakkiyam would
anxiously pour out his words.
Bhooma Devi would
then intervene, “We can deal with it whenever it is taken away. Now, get up and
get on with your work,” she would say.
The process of
land acquisition was inordinately getting longer as he expected. Unlike others
who were worried about the possibility of future land acquisition, he put his
heart and efforts into his land with renewed vigour. Only in the fifth year
could everyone feel the pain of seeing their land lying barren without any
crops and began ploughing it, swallowing their apprehensions. They sowed seeds.
They were trying to match Rajapakkiyam’s enthusiasm in cropping. Though the
harvest was good, probably with the blessing of God Aiyanar, it was lying
unattended on the field, like a goat growing weak while being sold, without
even a soul to shoo away the birds.
The buzz around
land acquisition had almost been forgotten. Those who were whiling away their
time in tea shops would sometimes cause uneasiness in everyone’s mind with
their predictions of land acquisition. But the heat generated would be doused
in no time. Those words of reminders would pierce Rajapakkiyam’s interiors
whenever they fell into his ears, and it would pain like a thorn driven into
the skin for a couple of days. He would then forget as he got busy with his
daily chores with his bulls, harvest, and cart.
Like her father,
Bhooma Devi was also very fond of her land and crops. Her world of love was
confined with the goats, bulls, and chickens she was rearing up. Rajapakkiyam
used to speak to himself: ‘This girl loves this land and people around here. It
is my bad luck she was born as a girl. Had she been born as a boy in the place
of that bugger who is waiting to sell this land for nothing, I would have
gotten very strong support.'
The sun had risen,
its head a bit above. The sounds of tin sheets being beaten and the howls of
shooing away on the west and south of Vellur fields were heard faintly. Within
some time, the sounds came from Gangaikondan fields in the east. It is now dawn
for those blokes from Vellur and Gangaikondan. But for these men from
Veppankurichi? It hasn’t dawned yet. Couldn’t even see a fly or a crow this
side. People speak of Rajapakkiyam’s harvest of pearl millet. A single panicle
looks like corn and gives more than a handful with one shake, they say. If we
sit in our houses leaving these freshly grown four stalks of pearl millet to
the birds, our pots won’t fill. Will it?’
Bhooma was
standing near the shed, watching the broker uncle Kanagaraju’s field in the
west. Her aunt Ambujatchi stopped her daughter Thangam, shouting at her loudly,
which seemed to have been enough to drive away the birds in that field when her
daughter left with Bhooma. ‘If that small girl had accompanied me, I would have
gotten a person for chit-chat,’ Bhooma thought. “Go get four pitchers full of
water. The pearl millets are not standing stiff in your father’s field anyway
to attract the birds in flocks. Are they?’ – If her father hadn’t been there,
her mother Panjalai could have given a strong response to her aunt’s pugnacious
words. - ‘Ask your father to stand at Mantharakuppam bus stand wearing a
starched shirt without folds; the pearl millet will grow stiff like a whip in
the field.”
When Bhooma was
deeply sunk in thoughts, she was astonished at hearing the sound of tin sheets
in the east that came as quickly as a slap on her ears. It was the sound of
Sikamani, the owner of the adjacent field. ‘Why this fellow…that too, today…’
The moment the
intimidated flock of birds flew towards the coconut trees near her side, Bhooma
became alert and started beating the tin sheet vigorously, running toward them.
It was likely that she could afford to be a little careless about those birds
thronging to her side had it not been from her arch enemy’s field. The birds,
frightened at her stone throws, went back where they came from. He was also
beating the tin drums relentlessly. She was tirelessly responding with her
shrieks like a brain-fever bird known for responding to any sound it hears.
As the time went
by, the tired birds, not knowing where to go, finally decided to fly away
towards the south as though bigheadedly resolved not to turn to that direction
ever.
The morning sun
was scorching. The sporadic sounds of tin sheets coming from various places had
begun waning. Even Sikamani, who was hitting the tin sheet like a lonely drum
played in the funeral, stopped his beating.
Sooner she
understood it was getting late, a sort of urgency had settled in her. She had
to run to her school after feeding her cattle something that she could collect
on her way. There mustn’t be any obstacle in the matters related to her
schooling. “Her mother used to chide her, “You have just passed your eighth
grade, but you run to school without missing a day as if you are doing your
B.A.”. Bhooma would run to her school without letting any of her mother’s words
get into her ears.
She put down the
tin sheet and the cane at the shed, pulled out the towel hanging on the
clothesline, and wiped her face. She tied her plait, made a bun, and picked a
sickle from the doorway beam. She went out to the field with a towel wrapped
around her waist, tucking the sickle in it. She searched for the young pearl
millet plants that hadn’t started sprouting in their nodes, picked them, and
heaped them on the ridges once she got them handful. If only fed with such
green stuff, then the milch cows would be ready with their heavy udder to
provide milk for the couple of subsequent milking. If you expect them to give
more milk without feeding them good stuff, you would be left with aching
fingers by milking their withered teats.
The sun, which was
till then flirting with the tips of panicles, had started ascending above,
leaving the men sweating more and struggling with itching due to the coarseness
of stalks that rubbed their bodies. The work resumed faster with briskness than
earlier.
These tender
leaves would be sufficient for both mother cow and its calf. Now she had to
arrange some fodder stuff for the calves that would stand obstructing her way.
She dug the pearl millet grasses at the bottom of the crops and collected them.
They were very green and soft, suitable for the tender intestines of calves for
easy digestion. If the young calves were fed with the relatively grown leaves
instead of feeding them with tender grasses, which otherwise demanded some
amount of labour, the coarseness of the leaves would leave the soft intestinal
walls bruised and leave the calves suffering from frequent diarrhoea. Even the
medicines brought from Thanjavur would be of little help, and the calves would
have had their worst days before getting healed up.
She brought the
bundle of pearl millet grasses she collected, kept it on the ridge, and stood
up. Bermudagrass was found thickly grown along the ridges. She remembered the
cart-pulling bulls yearningly glancing at her feeding the milch cows and calves
two handfuls of green grasses yesterday, paying no attention to the hay they
were offered and trying to reach out the grasses, stretching out their necks,
stiffening it, to the extent of the rings on their ropes giving in its hold.
She could pick
some mulberry leaves for the baby goats later while going home. She sat on the
ridge thinking of collecting at least two bundles of Bermuda grass for the
bulls. The grasses as tall as a handspan were found fully grown with strong
roots. Only the centre of the ridge had the grasses that looked like hairs on
the monkey’s head due to frequently stepping on it. She cut the grasses along
the edges of the ridge. Within two or three swings of the sickle, she couldn’t
grab the volume of the grasses and spilled some of them on the ridge.
This part of the
land used to be full of dried, deep-rooted Bermuda grasses when the property
was divided between her father and uncle Kanagaraju. Ploughing it would never
be satisfactory, no matter how many times it was ploughed. Overgrowth of weeds
would be a persistent problem despite frequent clearing. The narrow path her
uncles possessed now was a common path on the edge, and thus there would always
be thick growth of thorns and milkweeds. Grasses and deep-rooted Bermuda
grasses would never be visible there. Her father used to narrate the story of
property division very frequently, with an air of frailty.
Gopal Padaiyachi,
the father of landowner Ganesan, was the one who divided that land. The well
was left as common for both parties. He then divided the land into two on two
sides, east and west. “Eleiii, Rasokkiyam, you are the elder in the family.
Actually, I must ask your opinion first, as our customs demand, as to which
part of the property you would like to have. But this broker chap has been
doing business in the market, buying and selling the cattle and sorts of stuff.
He is still not well settled in family matters. That is why I am asking him.
You please don’t be angry.”
Gopal asked
Kanagaraju, who was sitting, keeping his wife behind him. “Now tell me, you
young man! Which part of the land would you like to have?” Kanagaraju tuned
back, received the message from his wife’s gesture, and then announced, “My
elder brother deserves some concern. He has toiled all through his life. He
shouldn’t be given the land with a path on the edge with the burden of clearing
thorns and milkweeds all his remaining years. So, you can give him the part of
the land inside where cows and goats won’t trouble much. Give me the part with
the common path. I do accept that this part of the land will have troubles from
cows and goats as well. But I will somehow manage it by putting a fence of
common teal around it.”
Father wasn’t
unaware of his brother’s scheme. It wasn’t very easy to remove the deep-rooted
Bermuda grasses in the interior part of the land; no matter how hard one would
try weeding it out. But the thorns and milkweeds in the land sitting along the
common path could be easily weeded out, and the land could be made fit for agriculture
with a single run of the plough. It is an open secret everyone knew. One could
easily infer the meaning of his brother’s words of help. Rasokkiyam used to
vent out his pain even today when tired of clearing the deep-rooted Bermuda
grass on the ridge, “You can give my elder brother the beautiful land with
deep-rooted Bermuda grass and give me the doomed land with milkweeds. This is
how my younger brother got this land divided.”
…
Squatting on the
ridge, Bhooma wiped off the sweat on her face with her skirt at her folded
knees and turned back. The clump of grasses had been kept across neatly in a
row on the ridge, which looked almost empty after the grasses were cut off at
their bottom. These four clumps of grasses wouldn’t be sufficient even to fill
in the rear intestine of pot-bellied bullocks. But she couldn’t afford more
time to collect grass. It was already late. She had to take a bath, comb her
hair, and then run to the school. If the snake hadn’t fallen into the well, she
would have taken a bath in the well, climbing down its steps.
She got up. Her
shirt was almost soaked in sweat and caused discomfort as she was cutting the
grass with the tightly wrapped towel around her waist. She grew uneasy at
seeing the sweat in patches on either side of her nipples that had started
showing up. At the same time, it was burning as if getting boiled inside. She
pulled out her shirt’s neck in front as she was standing and blew out inside
the shirt through the gap to douse the heat.
Sooner the air
touched her already sweat-soaked body, she felt chilled. That too, when it
brushed the tips of her developing nipples, she felt a shudder all over her
body. She let out the air once again. The same sharp, chilling pleasure. She
blew the air again and again. She needed that ecstatic chillness and shudder
that she experienced in her tiny nipples on her breasts. A sort of inexplicable
ecstasy of flying in the air as though having come to experience something
unknown.
She kept blowing
the air in, and at one point of time, she pulled her breath in and let it out
in one go inside her shirt. Once the interior was filled with a good volume of
air, she grasped the shirt collar along her neckline tightly, thus preventing
the air from escaping. The nipple tips trapped in the armour of air, like air
in a balloon, caused in her an iciness of stupor and ecstasy. In the eyes of
hers, were seen the pearl-like panicles of pearl millets with their golden
grains as she lifted her head up with an unbearable inertness of pleasure. In
every leaf of its panicle were found sparrows picking the grains with
precision; she wriggled her body for every move of the panicle, feeling her
body set on fire, as if each pick of sparrows at grains was thrown on her body,
pinching and tickling her. When the sparrows jumped over to the adjacent
panicle, she also swayed her head in stupor, aligning her pleasure with the
sways of the stalks. Grains everywhere. Unending sways of panicles. Succinct,
crispy talk in between along with them. Suddenly, a point of alertness woke her
up while romancing with the sparrows for some while. She thought for a moment,
“How come I fell into such a state of inertness while allowing these many birds
to relish my crops?”
“ndhoooo”.
She got up furiously and jumped into the field to shoo the birds away. Hardly
would she have taken a couple of steps; she tripped over as her legs got
tangled with the Bermuda grass grown very thick below. She fell down and rolled
on the ground.
A sense of
disgrace overwhelmed her the moment she fell down. Unable to balance herself,
she was sitting with her legs spread wide and skirt pulled upward, exposing her
thighs. Within seconds, she came to her senses, forgetting her pains of
falling, and looked round to ensure if anyone had seen her, only to get disappointed
to see Sikamani standing on a big ridge in front of her with his lungi tightly
folded across his waist and a headgear worn with his vest.
She stood so
stunned that she couldn’t come to her senses as to what to do. In that fraction
of a second, she saw his eyes that met hers directly, displaying an amount of
anxiety and shock as though they had seen something that they were not supposed
to. He swiftly lowered his head and moved away from that place fast, like a rat
snake.
Though she wasn’t
sharing good terms with him, his behaviour as if he had seen something he
hadn’t before did indeed trouble her. Keeping herself poised again, she bent
down and was tremendously shocked at what she had seen. Her fair, slightly
toned breasts, which had, till then, not seen the sunlight, were showing up as
the top button of her shirt fell off when she rolled down on the ground. She
hid her breasts in reflex with her hands, lowered her body, and was overwhelmed
with shame.
Even long after
the sound of his footsteps disappeared, she was feeling the tremor in her. When
she looked up slowly, with her mind wavering uncontrollably, she found herself
completely drenched in sweat. The sweat was dripping down from her hands that
were cuddling her breasts and fell on her knees. Ants were moving on the
exposed part of her anklets, which weren’t covered by the skirt. She turned
back, still shivering, and saw some pearl millet stalks lying broken like her.
Lonely, enormously
tired, and anxious, sitting with the pearl millet crop standing around her, she
threw her eyes around that silent field. Sparrows were also absent. There were
no pickings on the panicles. Everything was just colourful fantasies of
adolescence. The pains and blows of those fantasies—she felt like crying at the
very thought of it.
She felt she had
been caught in a whirl of wind’s mischief and couldn’t avoid the pain of being
slapped by anger and disgrace when she remembered him leaving her with his head
lowered as if he had stepped into the fire. She took out a safety pin hooked in
her bangles and stood up, fixing up the band of her shirt from where the button
fell off.
***Ended***
