Land of Five Rivers Read Online Free PDF Page B

more. Sunder Lal asked, ‘Was he good to you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Didn’t beat you, did he?’
    Lajwanti leant back and rested her head on Sunder Lal’s chest. ‘No... he never said a thing to me. He did not beat me, but I was terrified of him. You beat me but I was never afraid of you... you won’t beat me again, will you?’
    Sunder Lal’ s eyes brimmed with tears. In a voice full of remorse and shame he said ‘No Devi... never... I shall never beat you again.’
    ‘Goddess!’ Lajo pondered over the word for a while and then began to sob. She wanted to tell him everything but Sunder Lal stopped her. ‘Let’s forget the past; you did not commit any sin. What is evil is the social system which refuses to give an honoured place to virtuous women like you. That doesn’t harm you, it only harms the society.’
    Lajwanti’s secret remained locked in her breast. She looked at her own body which had, since the partition, become the body of a goddess. It no longer belonged to her. She was blissfully happy; but her happiness was tinged with disbelief and superstitious fear that it would not last.
    Many days passed in this way. Suspicion took the place of joy: not because Sunder Lal had resumed ill-treating her, but because he was treating her too well. Lajo never expected him to be so considerate. She wanted him to be the same old Sunder Lal with whom she quarrelled over a carrot and who appeased her with a radish. Now there was no chance of a quarrel. Sunder Lal made her feel like something fragile, like glass which would splinter at the slightest touch. Lajo took to gazing at herself in the mirror. And in the end she could no longer recognise the Lajo she had known. She had been rehabilitated but not accepted. Sunder Lal did not want eyes to see her tears nor ears to hear her wailing.
    ...And still every morning Sunder Lal went out with the morning procession. Lajo, dragging her tired body to the window would hear the song whose words no one understood.
    ‘The leaves of lajwanti wither with the touch of human hand.’

a hundred mile race

    Balwant Gargi
            I n a low thatched mud-hut the peasants sat and discussed how they could get word to all the villages about their urgent meeting. They asked me what they should do. I could not help them.
    Suddenly a low timid voice startled us. ‘Please give me your message. I’ll take it.’ He was a tough looking young man of about twenty in a frazzled shirt and patched carrot-coloured shorts.
    ‘To which village?’ I asked.
    ‘To all the villages,’ he replied.
    ‘All the villages! Do you know that the meeting is to be held tomorrow?’
    ‘Yes, I know that,’ he insisted. ‘There are only ten or twelve of them...the distance cannot be more than sixty miles. I’ll cover it within a few hours.’
    Did he mean it? I looked at him. His thick lips were like furrows in a freshly-ploughed field, and above them spread the bluish down of a moustache which merged into a sprouting beard. He had a long neck, a thin belly like that of a leopard and big knees, round like bronze shields. On his bulging calves there was no hair, only the tattooed figures of two peacocks. His eyes were dull. How on earth could he cover sixty miles in a few hours? Was it that he did not understand what we said?
    Inder Singh, an old peasant with a brown gnarled beard, rapped my shoulder with his metallic hand and said, ‘It is Boota Singh... from Bhagoo village. Don’t you know him? He can run a hundred miles at a stretch.’
    ‘A hundred miles?’
    ‘Yes. A hundred miles. When he runs he leaves the storm wind behind...’
    ‘A hundred miles!’ I was puzzled.
    ‘Have you never heard the name of Boota Singh?’ asked lnder Singh.
    ‘Never.’
    ‘Boota is the son of Rakho,’ began Inder Singh. ‘He comes from my village. Soon after he was bom, his mother put him in a basket in the field where she was harvesting and went on with her work. The family lived in one corner of the field