Читать книгу The Good Girls - Sonia Faleiro - Страница 18

The Naughty Boy

In fact, Veere’s brother had died of complications from diabetes. Veere built the house he lived in from scratch, on land he had purchased years earlier. Even if he knew what the people in the neighbouring village were saying, what could he do.

Every morning Veere and his three sons, Avdesh, Urvesh and Pappu, crossed the road and walked through the rice fields towards the Ganga River. Rolling up their trouser bottoms, they waded into the cold, fast-moving water. On that side of the bank, they grew watermelons and cucumbers on public land. But they also worked the land of better-off men in exchange for a portion of the harvest. In a good year the Yadav men brought home about 2 lakh rupees from their share of the wheat, garlic and tobacco that they sold in nearby market towns. To this they added the rent from a shop they had built alongside their house.

Every rupee that wasn’t spent on food or treats like tobacco was kept aside to finish construction on the house. So far it had a sturdy entrance door, three rooms and a terrace roof. The men installed a handpump in the courtyard, stretched out a piece of rope for a clothes line and painted a bright green swastika for good luck. Veere’s wife Jhalla Devi would have liked a kitchen, but her husband asked what was wrong with cooking outdoors. There wasn’t even paint on the walls, he scolded.

In the evenings, Veere planted himself on the charpoy just outside the house, rolling beedis and sipping chai. The thick milk cream sometimes stuck to his moustache, which he wore long and curved like a door handle.

‘Jai Ram ji ki,’ he called out to strolling Yadav men, taking in the evening air. All hail Sri Ram. ‘Come, come, sit,’ he nodded his grizzled head towards a second charpoy.

The men set down their umbrellas. They pulled out beedis. Veere handed over a box.

‘And?’ he said, as they plucked out a match.

Affairs in Lucknow were always discussed at length – of how so-and-so was only a puppet in the hands of that other so-and-so, then the sale price of the fruits and vegetables they grew, and then invariably someone would look up at the broad sheet of cloudless sky and complain that the monsoon was like a woman. She couldn’t be relied on to keep time. When would she arrive?

Sometimes Veere remembered his sons.

‘Arre!’ he shouted.

He treated them like boys, even though the eldest was himself a father. He didn’t let them speak. The boys had nothing to say to him either.

They trooped out of the house sullen-faced, like their feet were made of cement.

The older two were good boys, neighbours later said. They stayed close to home. One loved his wife, the other worshipped books. The youngest, on the other hand, was ‘naughty’, as even his father admitted to those around him. ‘He liked to roam around,’ one of the Yadavs said.

But what did that even mean in Jati?

Pappu had no money, no bicycle and no place to go. The next-door village didn’t like his type. The Yadavs on his side had less than he did. There wasn’t even a snack shop where he could sit and order a handful of hot roasted gram. The riverbank offered welcome relief for many, away from the chatter of the household, but to him it represented toil. There was the fair, but that came once a year.

Even a naughty boy like him, what could he really get up to?