Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

Another hour later, three young men took shape on the road, beedis glowing palely in the heat and dhotis tucked up around their groins. As they neared they kissed the air, prompting Tochi out of the shade and into the white sun. The men took his place, chatted a while, crushed their beedis under their feet and went on their way again.

It was nightfall by the time the landowner returned, whistling to himself. He seemed a little drunk. Tochi stood and moved into the moonlight. The old man looked surprised, frightened even, and his hand went round to his back.

‘I have a gun,’ he said.

‘I’m from Manighat, sahib.’

‘Are you here to cause trouble? I have a gun.’

‘I’m looking for work, sahib.’

‘You can’t buy my vote. You Sena logh think you can buy anything. I have a gun.’

‘I will work very hard, sahib. I have a brother also who can work if you need him.’

There was the squeak-squeak of a metal bolt being simultaneously twisted and yanked, and then the gates opened. It was the servant. ‘Shall I put your food on the table, sahib?’

‘Has everyone else eaten?’

‘They are waiting for you.’

The landowner started up the incline to his gate.

‘Sahib, about any work. .?’ Tochi said.

The landowner stopped, turned round. ‘There’s not even enough for the men from this village. Maybe try further on.’

The old man made to leave again, but Tochi dared another question. ‘Could I trouble your kindness for a suggestion, sahib?’

‘Villages nearer the city, maybe. Most of their sons have gone to work in the town.’

The servant closed the gate behind his master, and Tochi heard the bolt being forced back across.

The next day he put on the same clothes and headed out again, past Jannat and on to the next village, another dirt-driven plot of huts and flat fields of wheat and corn. He could see fields of high cotton, too, bending demurely in the sunlight. The landowner was in his house, completing his ablutions. Tochi was asked to wait in the courtyard. He stood beside a large tulsi plant and reached over to stroke its velvety leaves. It felt nice. When he heard a door open, he returned his hands behind his back.

The landowner sat on his charpoy in just a white vest and lunghi while one of his granddaughters knelt behind massaging mustard oil into his hair. He listened to Tochi, then said he was sorry, but there would be uproar if he gave work to someone from outside the village, especially in these times.

‘I have quick hands, sahib,’ Tochi said. ‘I’ll get all the cotton before it dries.’

‘Sorry, kaka,’ the man said, and slid his eyeballs up, his brow constricting in the effort to meet his granddaughter’s looming face. ‘Tell your dadi to give this young man five rupees. He’s come so far to hear bad news.’

Tochi said there was no need, and, if sahib would give him the gift of his permission, he would prefer to get on his way.

The next village was six miles further on and it was past noon when he arrived at the gate. But the landowner had gone on a month-long pilgrimage, and his sons were spending the day in the city.

He carried on, walking the sandy edge of the asphalt to avoid the thickening traffic. The roadside shacks turned from mud to tin, and he passed a petrol garage where two attendants in grubby IOCL overalls lazed against a pump. He was on the fringes of the city. He entered Randoga, the biggest village in the district, with a skyline of wooden balconies and red Airtel satellite dishes.

A wide dirt track separated the fields and their farmhouses from the mazy central bazaar. He passed a man leading a herd of wet black cows and asked him who were the main landowners around here. The man pointed to a few farmsteads, but said he doubted they’d be in at this hour. Tochi made for one of the houses anyway, cutting a diagonal through a field of wheat. He stopped at the open gate. A woman, bent at the waist, was cleaning the courtyard with a charoo. She was too glitteringly dressed to be the lagi. Tochi tidied his shirt into his trousers and wiped the sweat from his face with the inside of his collar. He tapped his knuckle twice against the metal gate, then took a step back and put his hands out of sight. She twisted round, still bent over, and asked him what he wanted.

‘Please forgive me, memsahib. I wondered if sahib had a minute, please?’

‘What do you want that only takes a minute?’

So he wasn’t in, or at least not within earshot, and she sounded like trouble. ‘I’ll be on my way, memsahib.’

‘I said what do you want?’ She stood, queenly, and dropped the charoo to one side. She looked young. There were red ribbons strewn through her hair-bun.

‘I’m looking for work, memsahib.’

‘Oh, well, that’s what you all say, but when you get it. . Look! We have to clear up after your mess.’

‘I’ll leave you in peace, memsahib.’

‘Come here.’

‘I need to find work.’

‘Here,’ she said again.

He started towards her, her face ageing with every stride: the lines showing through her powder, the smear of henna beneath her hairline, the thick bristle around pencilled eyebrows.

‘What kind of work?’

‘Farm work, memsahib.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘From the city,’ he lied. He didn’t want any trouble following him home.

She stared for a while. Then: ‘We do have work. Lots of it. But sahib has gone to the bazaar.’

‘Acha, memsahib.’ He turned to go.

‘You can wait inside.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Did you not hear?’

‘Memsahib, I need to find work.’

‘I told you there is work. Just wait inside.’

He didn’t move.

Her hard face hardened further. A shadow over a stone. ‘Things easily go missing from these houses. It’s an open entrance, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want anyone in this village to think you weren’t trustworthy.’

Tochi went through a large green door inlaid with gauze against the mosquitoes. He waited beside the charpoy, covered in its white sheet. He heard a door swinging open, clattering shut, and a tap running. A minute or so later she entered, her make-up now all gone. ‘That sheet stains so easily,’ she said, and started unbothering herself from her sari.

Afterwards, he walked back round the dirt track and on to the pale stone lanes of the bazaar. A parade was on: Sita in her Rajasthani red, dupatta pulled forward like a deep hood and led by a single boy in white turban and tunic, miserably banging his drum. Tochi picked his way through the singing crowd, slipping into the spaces vacated by others, always moving ahead. No one seemed to notice him. He emerged into a side alley crammed with wedding-card manufacturers and moved away as some girls rode past, quacking their scooter horns. The alley spread into a paved square where four young men were playing cards on an unstitched brown sack, the kind used to transport crops. Their lunghis were rolled up around their knees and their calves covered in mud and field cuttings. Tochi crouched beside them and at the end of the hand asked if there was work around here. They said there was lots of work, but also lots of people looking for it.

‘What should I do?’

‘Go and register at the dhak-khana,’ one of them said. He seemed the youngest of them, with a fluffy moustache above thin lips. ‘They’ll add you to the list.’

‘It’ll be a long list.’

He made a so-so motion with his head. ‘A year. Maybe six months if you give him enough. And have a phone for your home.’ By which he meant steal a phone for your home.

Tochi nodded. So they could call him if a job came up. ‘Do you know anything? Any work going?’

‘Yaar, if I did do you think my brother would be sitting at home counting his fingers?’ They laughed and dealt the next hand.