The Village by the Sea Read Online Free PDF

all hooted and laughed.
    ‘You think I would drive a bullock cart?’ the driver shouted at them from the window.
    ‘Bullocks don’t stick in the sand like your fancy motor,’ they screamed, but he was gone.
    Lila did not stop to listen to more but hurried on, the soles of her feet burning on the hot sand. Then she came to the great banyan trees and the feathery-leaved drumstick trees that threw some shade on to the flat parched earth around the village and here it was cooler.
    The village road leading to the market was lined with houses, some of them of solid brick and whitewashed, with bright floral patterns painted on their veranda walls, and others made of mud, with tattered palm leaves for roofs. But large or small, rich or poor, each had a sacred basil plant growing in a pot by the front door. Children and mongrels were playing in the dust,
women were cleaning rice or throwing out pails of dirty water into the lane.
    At the end of the lane was the temple. It was not very old or beautiful, it had four brick pillars supporting a tiled roof, an unwalled court and a small alcove that housed an idol. That was all. But there were several young men on the steps, sitting and playing drums and singing.
    Lila could not help staring, and a young girl who was watching from a brick house across the lane called to her, ‘See, Lila, the actors have come. They are going to do a play tonight.’
    Lila smiled and went up to her friend Mina. ‘Which play? Do you know?’
    ‘I don’t know, but it will be the same they always have of course,’ said Mina who had seen them all, living as she did across from the temple where they were always staged. ‘It will be the Radha-Krishna story, or the Rama-Sita, or the Nala-Damayanti. They always do those, you know.’
    Lila had been to very few. ‘Will you go and see it?’ she asked enviously.
    ‘I will sit on my veranda and see!’
    ‘You’re lucky to live here, in the village.’
    ‘Come and watch it with me.’
    ‘I can’t come out at night.’
    ‘Why not? Hari can bring you.’
    ‘Hari and I can’t go out together and leave the little girls alone.’
    ‘What can happen to them? Your mother and father are there.’
    But Lila shook her head without explaining. ‘I have to go and buy some rice and sugar. Will you come?’
    Mina had nothing to do, it seemed – her parents were trying to find her a husband – and she came. They strolled down the lane together, past the women who sat on the two sides of it, each with a banana leaf spread out before her on which she placed her wares – usually just a few shining purple aubergines, a bunch of spinach, five or six bananas, maybe a green coconut or two, and always handfuls of flowers, pink and white and yellow flowers plucked from the hedges and bushes. Mina bought some to make a garland for her hair. For a little more money, you could buy a ready-made one.
    Lila could not spend money on such things. She went to one of the two grocery stores on the market square where one could buy rice, eggs, potatoes, sugar, oil, tea and sweets, and bought
her rice there after carefully fingering all the varieties and choosing what seemed best at the lowest price.
    There were many others waiting to be served. As they stood about, picking potatoes out of the buckets or trickling rice through their fingers, they gossiped. Lila and Mina learnt what the timber on the beach was for.
    ‘Did you see, Biju’s timber has come from Alibagh?’
    ‘Oh, that was Biju’s timber? For the boat?’
    ‘And the diesel engine? Has that come too?’ Someone sniggered.
    ‘They will come – you’ll see. Biju is not fooling us. He can buy
two
diesel engines with all his money.’
    ‘We’ll see.’
    Lila and Mina turned back. Lila’s shopping bag was full and heavy.
    ‘My father says Biju has made all his money by smuggling.’
    ‘Smuggling?’ Lila was not really as surprised as she sounded. She had heard this before. ‘Do you believe that?’
    ‘Of