Seasons of the Palm Read online

  ‘Aiy! Want to be fed? Want me to go collecting leaves for you? Can’t feed on your own, princess? Off now! All of you! Or I’ll kick your behinds.’

  Shorty yells at his sheep in mock fury. They return to their peaceful grazing. Vattalu is a spoilt creature. Unlike the others, she does not like to graze off the ground. She holds her head high and likes it when the herdsman feeds her a picking of leaves and stalks. She loves to plant her forelegs on the tall fences that circle fields full of crop and snap at the fresh green inside. She is a known leader of the pack, and many times in the harvest season has led the others to taste the forbidden ripened grain. Once, Shorty was forced to beat her, and he almost broke her leg. That did not deter her, though. She continues to be adventurous.

  Watching the sheep, Shorty feels something in his stomach, which pushes upward, till he knows it—a great desire to test his power over the herd. He knows that his herd looks up to him. Even when they are grazing peacefully, they are alert to his voice. They usually heed him when he calls out, ‘Ho, ho!’

  He looks around. The sheep are spread wide, all over the field. His eyes rest on Veeran. Veeran moves slowly, nose to the ground, unmindful of the tiny black sparrow perched on his back. Should he try calling Veeran? He has never tested him before, not once. What if Veeran ignores him?

  Shorty hears the Mistress’s harsh bellow in his ears. ‘Dai! You! Shorty!’ Filled with resolve, he clears his throat. In a loud whisper, he calls out, ‘Dai, Veera!’ He tightens his jaw and tries again.

  ‘Dai! Veera!’

  His voice slashes the air, harsh and sharp, like the sting of the midday sun. The wide field returns his voice to him, a booming echo. Veeran jerks his head up. He looks at Shorty, his eyes anxious. Shorty feels the darkness in his head dissolve, sheer happiness courses through his skull and down his back.

  What next, though? Shorty really has nothing to say to Veeran. But he must.

  ‘Can’t graze with the others? Needs his own kingdom . . . Come here!’

  Veeran looks puzzled. Shorty smirks—the sheep does not know if he is really angry. Or only pretending. Veeran slips into a plot where several other sheep are feeding. He ambles along, his bell sending out a clear, round tinkle. The sun has dried the dew off the grass. The leaves on the ground are no longer damp. Veeran’s nose takes him to where he wants to feed.

  Shorty continues to bask in his absurd happiness. Veeran has not disobeyed him; he was held by the power of his voice. He is surprised and a little embarrassed that the Mistress’s harsh tone is his now. The familiar voice that reaches him in the sheep shed every morning, as he lies huddled in his ragged jute sack. Her voice is merciless. Even her husband, his Master, does not shout for him that way. Shorty dreads her call, a stinging whiplash that cruelly peels the sleep off his body. A tone he cannot ignore, that torments him into getting up.

  In the early days, when he had just begun to work for her, he rebelled against that voice, tried to steal an extra minute of sleep, lying still for a few moments after she yelled for him. But soon he learned that it did not pay to disobey.

  Thwack! One morning, a thin strip of leather caught his naked foot. At first he thought a monstrous mosquito had bored into his skin. The sheep shed was full of big, black mosquitoes. He turned around and tried to sleep on. Thwack! He opened his eyes and heard a rasping voice float in through the dark.

  ‘Here I am, yelling my throat dry! And you continue to sleep! A young lad like you should get up at once! I should starve you and then you’ll know. You’ll be up when I call for you. You’ve become lazy, that’s what it is . . .’

  He had been beaten! Whipped on the sole of his foot! Close to tears, but helpless, Shorty got ready for work. This happened a few times. Gradually, Shorty learned to wake up at the Mistress’s first call.

  As for the mosquitoes, they are still there. They hang in thick clusters, on the roof of the sheep shed, on its walls. The sheep shed is a natural mosquito breeder. Its mud floor is always wet with sheep piss and shit. Shorty cannot ever hope to keep the tiny wretches away. They are at their worst in the monsoon months. Then he needs two jute sacks—one to lie on and one to cover himself with. But they manage to pierce through his cover somehow. Often, he has woken up to see mosquitoes hovering like bees around his face. Sometimes, he collects wild basil leaves, strews them in a circle around him and curls up within that charmed ring. But the mosquitoes stay out only as long as the leaves are fresh. If he rolls over or kicks at the leaves, they are squashed and of no use. Then the mosquitoes return, vengeful and triumphant, to taunt him.

  Sitting under the neem tree makes him sleepy. He yawns loudly and stretches out on the ground. The earth is cool. Its thin carpet of neem leaves and twigs grazes his skin. He looks up. He has always wondered at this single neem. Solitary and shady. How old is it? Through the delicate tracery of leaf and twig, he spies a pair of sunbirds. They chase each other, springing lightly from branch to branch. His eyes follow their play but stop at a splash of black. The black-winged koel.

  Shorty never loses a chance to seek out the secretive koel. He loves the bird’s dark red eyes and black beak. The koel is a shy bird. It does not show itself easily. It changes its perch often and somehow manages to tuck its sheer black into the green of the neem. Shorty wonders if it feels his intent eyes roaming the neem’s branches. But he never gives up. He goes around the tree, until he sees at least a bit of the bird’s black tail between the leaves. If the koel flies away, Shorty makes a face.

  ‘Loser, loser! Got you, got you!’

  If the koel stays on despite his probing eyes, he is equally thrilled.

  ‘Saw you! Saw you!’

  It is his favourite game. But today, he is tired. He wants to close his eyes, not pursue the black bird. His body aches from working since dawn. He has been up a long time, since the cock’s first crow.

  The Master’s cowshed is a messy place. It holds a pair of overworked oxen that help to draw water from deep, sunken wells, a milch cow, a pregnant buffalo and two other she-buffaloes with their calves. The floor is always wet from the animals’ piss and dung. The oxen and the calves shit huge mounds. Their dung is easy to cart away. But not that of the ageing she-buffaloes. They shit down their legs, and their dung is loose and smelly. Whether they graze on fresh grass or feed on dried leaves and twigs, their dung remains the same. The pregnant buffalo is not too bad. Her dung is firm and almost dry.

  The dung has to be gathered carefully, with dried palm fronds. But a bit of dung always falls through the fronds. The Master does not like it if that happens. He has a thing about dung. He cannot bear to see it anywhere. If he sees some, his hands get to work right away, to fling it into his field or into the manure hole. Sometimes he is seen rushing away with handfuls of dung to the outfield, beyond the house.

  The Master likes his cowshed floor clean and swept first thing in the morning. He hates it if the animals are fed before the dung is removed. Sometimes, disgusted by cow feed and dung lying in heaps next to each other, he starts on the floor himself. His dhoti off his waist in a flash, he is seen bent to the floor, gathering turd. The Master in his loincloth—an angry man, whose wrath both shames and hurts. Shorty knows he must not let this happen too often.

  After the dung gathering, Shorty has to feed the animals. He fetches hay and dried stalks of the kambu to the shed. Huge piles that exhaust his thin hands. The animals immediately set up a chewing rhythm that follows Shorty as he sets about his next task. There is not a minute to be lost between his various duties. Just as he finishes with the animals, the Mistress shouts for him.

  ‘Dai! Shorty!’

  The voice never fails to startle him. Every day. It grabs him by the neck and shakes him up.

  ‘Coming!’

  It is not enough if he replies. He has to be at her kitchen door that very instant. She has a big can of milk ready, fresh from the buffaloes and mixed appropriately with water. The can is open, with a rough cloth tied to its mouth as a lid.

  Shorty has to take the can to where the Nadar caste people live. This is not easy, for he has to hold the heavy can by the cloth. On no account must he touch the can directly. Once he gets to the houses in the Nadar neighbourhood that buy milk, he sets the can down and stands away. The lady of the house opens the cloth lid, pours her share of milk into a vessel and ties up the can’s mouth once more. This happens in all the houses to which Shorty goes.

  Back at the Master’s home with an empty can, and the Mistress is ready with her next command.

  ‘Sweep the front yard!’

  Shorty does not need to be told this every day. He slips into each task effortlessly, yet the Mistress lists each of his labours out for him. It is almost light when he finishes sweeping.

  ‘Bring that bowl of yours!’

  Shorty loves this part. If she forgets or delays her command for the bowl, he keeps sweeping the yard though he has already finished with it. At these times, the Mistress smiles and says, ‘Come, come! Enough of the sweeping. I didn’t ask you to plough the yard. Take your coffee.’

  She pours thick milky coffee into the coconut shell that serves as his bowl and he sits by the kitchen door, leaning on it. He sips from his bowl, slowly, carefully, not wanting to lose out on a single drop. He cherishes this moment and wants it to never end. But it usually does, with the sound of the Master’s slippered feet nearing the kitchen. The Master greets him every morning with the same question.

  ‘Still here, Shorty? Isn’t it time to take the sheep out?’

  His head bent down, he mutters, ‘Going now.’

  He jumps to his task, painfully conscious of the Master’s eyes following his disappearing back as he turns at the sheep shed.

  Belly always teases him about his Master.

&nb
sp; ‘My Master this, my Master that! What airs! Just because you drink milk coffee!’

  ‘It’s better than that black shit they give you. My Master’s not a miser like yours.’

  ‘So? Go lick the butter on your Mistress’s fat arms!’

  Belly laughs and runs away from him into the wide expanse of the field.

  TWO

  A ripe leaf falls on his face. It lies flat across his closed eyes. He stirs, opens his eyes, then closes them tight and frowns. He feels it still, a heavy hand on his eyelids, gouging his eyes out. He turns his head first one way and then the other. With each turn, the hand tightens its grip. Long dirty blue–black nails protrude from it. A nail presses on his right eye, flicks the lashes open and stabs it.

  He wakes up startled. His eyes burn. Something trickles out of them. He wipes his cheeks dry. His eyes continue to ooze. He cannot see. There is something heavy on his nose. He shakes his head violently. A small yellowing neem leaf falls down.

  He is ashamed, but relieved.

  How long did he sleep? He gets up and rushes out of the shade of the neem tree. The sheep! He sees them ahead, grazing peacefully. The lambs sleep in the furrows. His eyes skim the herd as he counts the number of sheep in his head.

  So he has not slept for too long. Maybe only as long as it takes to chew an areca nut. Usually, the sheep stay close, but if he sleeps deep they might stray into the lakebed. Or even somewhere far away. The lambs could go into the thick bushes by the lake, get stuck in the burr and the thorn. The fox and the jackal live there, or so the elders in the village say. A fox is known to go straight for a lamb’s throat, and all is over before even a small bleat escapes its frail neck.

  Older sheep are sharp. They might even find their way to Sengaattu Master’s fields on the other side that are green with castor plants. Sheep love to feed their fill of the budding castor leaves and stalks. But afterwards they suffer for it, they feel drowsy, or else their feet buckle and they cannot walk as before. Then he has to rush and look for someone to cure them. Worse, Sengaattu Master might spot the sheep and come at him with his whip. Shorty winces at the thought. His back! That Master has several riding whips and is never seen without one.

  The sun rides high in the sky. Shorty pulls his loincloth into a firm knot across his hips and shakes the sand off his back. The prickly sand dust does not fall off easily. He unties the ragged brown towel around his head, twists it into a rope, and runs it up and down his back. The towel comes away, damp and flecked with a million dirt dots.

  He cannot remember when he washed last. Let the others come, he thinks. They can all go to the disused field-well on the far side of the fields. Jump straight in at midday, with the sun distant in the sky. Last year, they were there, splashing, bathing. This year, though, he has not gone to the well even once. The well sits old and abandoned, its walls broken and crumbling into the water. The water is green with slime and silt. Shorty remembers its taste well—thick on the tongue and slightly salty. They must try to find time to wash today. Somehow.

  Thinking tires him. His eyes scan the horizon, looking beyond the furrowed fields and fixing on the Big Rock at the far end. He starts walking. His feet scrape the hard earth and startles a lone pheasant nesting in the leaf-filled furrows. He bends down and feels the ground. His fingers find the nest, as big as the palm of his hand. Four eggs lie there, shiny and white. He feels sad. Silly pheasant. Why lay eggs after the harvest? It must have been fooled by the dried stalks nodding into the furrow and laid its eggs in the cosy undergrowth of fallen leaves. He picks up the eggs, knots them into his soiled towel, which he lets swing on his shoulder. I’ll fry them up for later, he thinks. He must make sure that Stumpleg does not find out. Bully, thinks he knows best. And hates to be left out of things. Stumpleg, their leader.

  He is almost near the tall twin palm. Where is Belly? Greedy girl! Must have drunk more than a belly full of her Mistress’s kanji. Get yourself here fast, he mutters. Busy, are you? Probably washing your Mistress’s arse.

  She works hard, he knows that. She usually finishes washing, scrubbing and cleaning by the late morning and is down in the fields with her sheep before noon. Not today, though. Letting your Mistress chew your ears off with her prattle, I’m sure, he thinks.

  He takes his towel with its treasures off his back and lays it down carefully at the foot of the tree. The twin palm grows out of a single root which forks into two trunks. Their branches swirl out, cross each other and intersect in a complicated pattern. Shorty loves to shinny up one hard trunk, pick his way through the swirl and jump on to the other one. His back pressed against the comforting roughness of one trunk, he rests his feet on the other, and stays there, dangling.

  Shorty and his friends often try to outdo each other in climbing the palm. It is not enough to climb fast—you have to climb higher than anyone else. Belly is one of the fastest tree-climbers in these parts. But she cannot climb very high. Her legs are short, like a hen’s. Shorty is a little taller and can nimbly jump on to a higher branch. But she refuses to accept he is better than her. Each time they play this tree-climbing game, she insists she is better, because she is faster.

  Shorty is almost halfway up the twin palm. He hears a flutter of wings. An eagle. It swoops down from the treetop and flies low, the shadows of its wings sketching a dark spread on the earth below. Shorty shades his eyes with the palm of his hand and looks north. No one in sight, not even a gambolling lamb. He sees in the distance a Master’s house, shrunk to a point. Its red roof gleams dully from afar.

  No Belly.

  He sits, his legs around the palm trunk. He slides down only when his knees start aching.

  The roughness of the palm is consoling. Like a garden lizard, he wants to lie slack on that trunk. A while later, he comes down and sits leaning against the palm’s roots. His eyes fix on the shallow pits in the furrowed plot of land, a few yards away. There are stones in some of the pits. Remnants of yesterday’s stone-hunting game. He gets up and sits by the pits. Belly had won, as usual. She is swift and sharp with her counting.

  Shorty starts to play the game on his own. He knows he will never be as good as Belly. She is younger than him by at least two years. And much shorter. Her stomach sticks out from her tiny body. Straw-stuffed scarecrow. Shorter than Shorty, he mutters to himself. Every morning her Mistress scowls at her: ‘Foul Belly! Just a strip of a stomach, but always hungry. I keep pouring the kanji and still she holds her bowl out!’

  Belly even remembers how much she is paid every year. How much she was spoken for, how much money her father received as an advance, how much of her pay remains with the Master, what amount her father would claim from that pay during the village temple festival—she knows it all. Shorty can never remember things like that. His mother and father take care of all that. Belly teases him about his ignorance. But he does not think it means anything.

  ‘What’s the big use? No one asks you anyway, you do what they tell you to . . .’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So nothing. Someone decides, takes the money. We graze the sheep, that’s all.’

  ‘Someone? So you call your own mother and father “someone”?’

  They fight over this often. And other things. He misses her. It does not matter if the others do not come: Stonedeaf, Stumpleg . . . But Belly. . . How her laughter rolls across the empty expanse of the field, scattering red dust in his face!

  Maybe he should drink his kambu kanji. Then she’ll surely come. The eggs! Would the pheasant have come back to them? She must have searched in vain. Shorty remembers a mad hen that tried to hatch old, smooth stones, thinking they were her eggs. Had the pheasant gone mad too? He has not heard her call. Maybe she has flown away, thinking she has laid her eggs somewhere else.

  He goes towards a cluster of palm thorns that stand on the mudbank. A small woven palm box lies hidden in it. He takes it out carefully, making sure the thorns do not graze his hand. Inside the box are a few matchsticks, rolls of paper and a small hollow stone with some oil in it. He takes these to a nearby rock. Beside it sits a dried gourd, face to the ground. Shorty makes a fire and puts the gourd on it. He pours in the oil. He has salt but no chillies. He runs to his tin pail, opens it and picks out the thin dried chillies that lie swimming in the kambu kanji. Back at the fire, he feels the gourd. It is warm. He throws the chillies in, and watches them simmer and burst. He takes out the eggs wrapped in his towel, breaks them and pours their yolk into the gourd. He watches the yolks thicken and fry. He puts the fire out. Egg curry ready.