The City of Joy Read online

  Next Prodip Pal asked his sons to cast their nets into the pool and fish for all the available carp and ruyi. Thanks to the celebrated harvest which preceded the war with China, Hasari, the eldest son, had been able to buy a few dozen fry to spawn in his water reserve. The fish had multiplied and grown so that now each one weighed several pounds.

  Kept until now as a provision against total famine, they would provide a surprise dish at the wedding banquet.

  "Twilight is near," the old man kept telling himself, "but the sun still glows red. Our chakra, the wheel of our destiny, has not yet completed its turn."

  "It was very pale, alluvial earth," Hasari Pal would recall. "But it was our earth, Mother Earth, Bhu-devi the goddess Earth. I had never known earth that was any other color and I loved it just as it was, without question. Don't we love our mother just as she is, whatever her complexion or faults? We love her. And if she suffers, we suffer with her.

  "It was the month of May, the very heart of the Bengali summer. The air seemed to shimmer over the overheated countryside. Every day I gazed long and confidently at the sky. It was gradually assuming the tints and shades of peacock feathers. According to an announcement made by the Brahmin priest of the village, one more moon and the monsoon would be with us. The Brahmin was a very wise and knowledgeable man. He was also very old and he knew all the villagers as if they were members of his own family, even though that was quite impossible because he was of high, noble birth, far above any caste we might belong to. On the first day of each new year our father and all the other family heads in the village used to go and consult him as to what the coming twelve months held in store as far as men, cattle, and the harvests were concerned. Like a good many of his caste, our elderly Brahmin knew the laws of the seasons and the paths pursued by the heavenly bodies. He was the one who fixed the dates for the agricultural work and the family ceremonies. No one knew quite how he made his calculations but he studied the movements of the planets and prescribed which days were most auspicious for sowing seeds, for harvesting, and for getting married. The wedding season was over for this year. Now was the time for the earth to be impregnated. The Brahmin had predicted a year of exceptional riches, a year blessed by the gods, a year such as only occurs once

  in ten years—or even longer; a year without drought or epidemics or cockchafers or locusts or any other calamity. He knew, our Brahmin priest."

  So the time to sow had come and each family went to make its puja to the gods. Hasari, with his father and his brothers, presented himself at the little altar at the foot of the banyan tree which stood at the entrance to the fields. "Gauri, I offer you this grain," his father recited, placing a grain of rice in front of the image of the wife of the god Shiva, protectress of peasants. "Give us plenty of water and return it to us a hundredfold." Three days later, sure enough, some beneficent storms came to soak the seedlings.

  Hasari was certain that this year the gods were at one with the Bankuli peasants. His father had not hesitated to borrow from the bald-headed usurer an additional two hundred rupees against a proportion of the prospective harvest. Hasari had used twenty-five of these rupees to hire a team of oxen to plow the field. About forty rupees went for seed; the rest had been spent to buy manure and pesticides. This would be one of the greatest harvests they had ever had and, since the premonsoon rains had fallen at the requisite time, the Pals could spare themselves the hiring of a water pump. Fortune was smiling indeed, for that would have cost them six rupees an hour, the equivalent of the price of four pounds of rice—a small fortune!

  Every morning Hasari went with his father and brothers to squat at the edge of the field. For hours on end he stayed there, contemplating the growth of the soft, young green shoots. The beginning of the monsoon was predicted for Friday, June 12. Friday is not a very auspicious day in the Hindu calendar. It did not matter really: the monsoon was the monsoon and its arrival each year was the gift of the gods to the people of India.

  E v e r y o n e —men, women, children, and even the animals—were anxiously staring at the sky. Usually a violent wind gets up a few days before the monsoon breaks. The sky darkens suddenly as clouds invade the earth, rolling one on top of the other like rolls of cotton and skimming across the surface of the fields at extraordinary speed. Then other enormous and seemingly golden-edged clouds succeed them and a few moments later a tremendous blast of wind explodes into a hurricane of sand. Finally, a further bank of black clouds, this time without their golden edges, plunges the sky and the land into darkness. An interminable roll of thunder shakes the air and the stage is set. Angi, the Fire god of the Vedas, protector of men and their hearths, hurls his thunderbolts. The large, warm raindrops turn into cataracts. Children fling themselves stark naked into the downpour, shrieking for joy, men dance and women chant their thanksgiving prayers in the shelter of the verandas.

  Water. Life. The sky is rendering the earth fruitful. This is rebirth, the triumph of the elements. In a few hours vegetation bursts forth from all directions, insects multiply, 14

  frogs come out in their multitudes, reptiles are found in profusion, and birds warble as they build their nests. Above all, the fields are covered, as if by magic, with a blanket of the most beautiful green that grows ever sturdier and ever taller. Dream and reality intermingle until after one or two weeks, in a sky at last more peaceful, appears the bow of Indra, king of all the gods, lord of the elements and of the firmament. To humble peasants this rainbow signifies that the gods have made their peace with mankind. The harvest will be good.

  A good harvest would mean that this year the Pals' field, which measured only half an acre, might perhaps produce one thousand pounds of rice—enough to feed the entire family for more than three months. While they waited for the next harvest the men would have to hire out their services to the zamindar, a very aleatory employment, which provided at best four or five days of work per month, but most of the time only a few hours. Such labor then earned only three rupees (about thirty U.S. cents) a day plus a portion of puffed rice and six bidis —these very slim cigarettes made out of a pinch of tobacco rolled up in a kendu leaf.

  Friday June 12 came and went, however, without the slightest cloud. Throughout the days that followed, the sky remained steely white. Fortunately Hasari had taken the precaution of reserving the irrigation pump. Unable to afford this luxury, Ajit, the Pals' neighbor, had already begun to lament his lot. After a few weeks the young shoots in his small rice field began to turn yellow. The village elders delved deep into their memories in an attempt to remember when the monsoon had ever in the past kept them waiting like this. One of them recalled that in the year Mahatma Gandhi died, it had not arrived until July 2. In the year of the war with China it hardly came at all, and at other times, such as the year when the prize bull died, it had poured down so hard around about June 15 that all the seedlings had been flooded out. That was no better.

  Even the most optimistic began to worry. Was Bhagavan, the great god, angry? The Pals went with their neighbors to the village priest to ask him to celebrate a puja to induce

  the rain to come. In return for his services the Brahmin asked for two dhotis for himself, a sari for his wife, and twenty rupees (two U.S. dollars). Everyone went rushing to the mahajan to borrow more money. In old times a puja involved the sacrifice of an animal, a he-goat for example, but these days people hardly ever sacrificed animals anymore. It was too expensive. The priest contented himself with lighting a wick impregnated with ghee, the ritual clarified butter, in front of the statue of Ganesh, the god who brings good fortune. Then he burned sticks of incense and intoned mantras* while the peasants listened respectfully.

  Yet neither Ganesh nor any of the other gods heard their prayers and Hasari was compelled to hire the irrigation pump. For six hours the pulsating of its engine brought the lifeblood essential for their growth to the shoots in the Pals* field. During that time the shoots took on their beautiful emerald color and grew four inches which meant that they were now in
urgent need of planting out. On the huge, cultivated plain beyond the green square of his field Hasari could see dozens of squares that were already quite yellow. Those peasants who had not been able to give their rice plants enough water were appraising the extent of the disaster. For them there would be no harvest. The specter of famine was rising on the horizon.

  Now no one scrutinized the sky any longer. The mahajan 's radio announced that this year die monsoon would be very late arriving. It had not yet reached the Andaman Islands, which lay a long way out in the Bay of Bengal, almost off the coast of Burma. In any case the radio could no longer teach the Bankuli peasants anything. "It could bring nothing but the evil eye," reflected Hasari. <4 So long as we hadn't seen the cuckoo jay, we knew there would be no rain for us."

  At the beginning of July a group of Bauls in ocher robes—wandering monks who sing the glory of the god Krishna—passed through the village. They stopped near the Gauri sanctuary under the banyan at the entrance to the fields and began to sing, punctuating their verses with the plucking of a single stringed lute, and with handbells and

  * Sacred formula in Sanskrit.

  tiny cymbals. "Bird of my heart, don't keep on roving," they chanted. "Don't you know that your wanderings cause us great suffering? Oh come to us, bird, and bring our water with you."

  All the Pals' attention was concentrated thenceforth on the pond that served as a communal water reserve. Its level was going down fast. The villagers speculated endlessly, trying to work out how long it would take the irrigation pumps to empty it, allowing for considerable evaporation in such torrid heat. The fateful moment came on July 23. That was the day they had to take out the fishes, which were floundering in the mud, and divide them among themselves. In such times of anguish, it was an occasion for unexpected rejoicing. To be able to eat fish was a real treat. Yet, in many a home, mothers renounced these treats with selfless foresight and dried the fish instead.

  In the Pals' field the luminous emerald green soon changed first to gray green and then to a yellowish color. The rice drooped, then wilted and finally died—the very rice that they had nursed, caressed, and loved. The rice they had suffered with, bowed their heads with, and grown old with. "I couldn't bring myself to abandon it," Hasari was to confide. "Totally overwhelmed by the magnitude of the calamity, I stood motionless at the edge of our field." Before each strip of ground, other despairing peasants remained right through the night, their heads bowed in dejection. Perhaps they were thinking of the lament of the fakir, enraptured with God: "There was a treasure in my field but today someone else holds its key and the treasure is no longer mine."

  It took Hasari the whole night to accept this tragic fact. At dawn he went home to sit under the veranda with his father and brothers. It was the old man, Prodip, who summed up their predicament: "We shall not go back to the field again this season." Moments later Hasari heard his mother lifting the lids of the storage jars lined up in the outhouse. The jars contained the rice that the Pals had set aside to await the next harvest. The poor woman began to evaluate how long the family could hold out on such meager reserves. Hasari already knew the answer. "If we rationed ourselves, allowing for a few handfuls of rice to

  be offered to the gods, we had only two months' food left." His wife, sisters-in-law, and children joined them. They all sensed that something was wrong but the old woman put the lids back on the jars and announced with apparent serenity: "We have enough rice for a good four months. Afterward, we'll have the vegetables." Reassured, old and young went back to their chores. Only Hasari remained behind. He saw tears on his mother's cheeks. His father came and put an arm around his wife's shoulders. "Mother of my sons," he said, "we shall both go without food for ourselves so that the rice lasts longer. The children must not suffer." With a nod of her head she approved the idea.

  Many of the villagers were already left with nothing. The first indication of this harsh reality was the disappearance from the village of the very poorest families—the Untouchables. They had realized that this year there would be not a single head of rice to be gleaned from the fields. No one actually said anything but people knew that the Untouchables had left for the great city of Calcutta, about sixty miles away. Next it was the turn of the fathers and the eldest sons, in homes where the earthenware jars were empty. Then whole families began to take to the road that led to the city.

  Their neighbors' departure was a source of great grief to the Pals. The families had known each other for so long. Before leaving his house the aging Ajit broke his clay pots and extinguished the oil lamp, the flame that burns constantly in every home; some of them had been alight for generations. With a hand that trembled slightly, he took down the pictures of the gods that had stood enthroned upon the small family altar and rolled them up in his knapsack. The gods wore great expansive smiles—smiles that seemed quite incongruous that morning. Prem, the eldest son, placed flowers and a few grains of rice outside the hole next to the doorway. This was the cobra's home. Prem recited a prayer to the snake, asking it to "guard this house and keep it safe until we return." Unfortunately, at that precise moment a black cat stalked past the hut. This did not augur well and so to thwart the evil spirits old Ajit had to draw them off on the wrong track. Thus he set off

  alone, heading north before gradually branching off to the South where he would rejoin his family. Before he left, the eldest son opened the parrot's cage. The parrot, at least, would be free. Instead of making straight for the sky, however, the bird seemed strangely at a loss. After some hesitation, it began to flutter from bush to bush behind its masters who were vanishing into the dust.

  The summer passed almost without a single downpour and once again it was time for the winter sowing. Without water, however, there would be no winter sowing: no lentils, no sweet potatoes, no winter rice. By this time Bhaga, the Pals' one remaining cow, was nothing but skin and bone. It was a long time since they had had any straw to give her, not to mention bran. She was fed on the heart of the three banana trees which provided a little shade for the hut. One morning Hasari found her lying on her flank with her tongue hanging out. It was then that he realized that all the livestock was going to perish.

  Cattle merchants closed in like vultures from the surrounding towns. They offered to buy any animals that were still alive and went off with truckloads of cows picked up for fifty rupees (five U.S. dollars) and buffalo for scarcely a hundred more. "Don't upset yourselves," they soothed with feigned compassion. "You can always buy your cattle back next year." What they omitted to say was that their price then would be ten times as much. A few days later it was the curriers' turn to come and take away the carcasses of those animals with which the peasants had not had the heart to part. Fifteen rupees was the price! (One U.S. dollar fifty!) It was that or nothing.

  November went by. The departure of the cattle had cut off the peasants' only fuel supply. There was no more dung with which to cook food and no more milk either. Gone was the sound of children's laughter. Their small stomachs swelled up like balloons and several of them died, the victims of worms, diarrhea, and fever—yet in reality victims of hunger.

  At the beginning of January villagers heard that food was being given out in the district capital, about twenty miles away. At first no one wanted to go. "We were peasants, not beggars," Hasari Pal was later to say. "But

  for the sake of the women and children we had to resign ourselves to accepting charity." Later government officials went through the villages announcing a relief operation called "Work for Food." Work sites were opened up in the area to deepen the canals, mend the roads, increase the size of the water reservoirs, raise the dikes, clear the undergrowth, and dig holes for trees to be planted. "We were given two pounds of rice for each day worked, a handout that was supposed to feed an entire family, and all the while the radio was saying that in the rest of the country the silos were full of grain."

  Toward January 20 a terrible piece of news began to spread: the well near the little altar to god Ga
uri had run dry. Men went down to the bottom to sound it, only to find that, sure enough, the underground streams had dried up. The municipal authorities had to set up a rota system for the three other wells in the village that were still providing a little water. The water was rationed. At first there was a bucketful per family per day, then half a bucket. Eventually there was only one cup per person which had to be drunk on the spot at the mayor's house. Day and night long lines stretched out in front of the mayor's door. Eventually sentries armed with clubs had to be placed next to the only well that was not yet dry. A few miles to the North, wild elephants dying of thirst had surrounded a pool and were charging any person rash enough to come in search of water.

  By now the fields were nothing but vast colorless expanses covered with a deep-cracked crust. The trees were in no better condition. Many of them were already dead and the bushes had long since been scorched.

  The Pals' resistance was coming to an end. One day the old man gathered his family around him. From a knotted corner of his dhoti he took out five tightly rolled ten-rupee notes and two one-rupee coins and handed them to Hasari.

  "You, my eldest son, take this money and go with your wife and children to Calcutta. In the big city you will find work. You will send us whatever you can. You are our only hope of not dying of starvation."