This Is Not That Dawn: Jhootha Sach Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ratan warned them, ‘You’d better watch out when you touch a girl from our gali else I’ll bust your heads open!’
    When Ratan came home, blood was oozing from a wound on his head. He told his mother, ‘I fell down at school, it’s nothing really.’
    Tara thought of Ratan as someone of her age and her gali companion. Ratan was closer to her than the other boys in the gali, and he was more refined and more educated than Bir Singh and Meva Lal. A kinship had developed between them. Two years later, Ratan had started to be a little playful. Tara scolded him, but she didn’t mind at all. She knew he liked her.
    They heard a call from Ratan’s house, from the other side of the staircase, ‘Tara, there’s no daal or vegetables here for me. If there’s any in your house, give me some too.’
    Tara looked at Sheelo meaningfully, ‘See what trouble he gives me! Why should I go?’
    Sheelo said, ‘Oh come on, I’ll take it to him. Tell me where the vegetables are.’
    Sheelo put some vegetables left over from the morning in a bowl, went to the other side of the stairway and called, ‘Where are you? Here are your vegetables.’ She gave him the food and returned.
    Tara and Sheelo continued to talk for a while. Tara’s mother could not leave the mourning till after sunset. Tara told Sheelo to watch her baby sister and started kneading the dough for the chapattis for dinner. Sheelo sat near her and told stories about different fights that had happened in her gali. A little while later, Sheelo said lifting the baby girl, ‘I’m going to take Munni and sit upstairs. I need some fresh air and Munni can play there just as well. You cook the chapattis.’
    Tara put the daal on the fire and began to roll the chapattis. Soon she had made the chapattis, scattered the coal to lower the heat, washed the kneading tray and the rolling pin and board and put them away. Then she climbed the stairs leading to the open roof to talk to Sheelo.
    Munni was sitting on the roof in a pool of her own pee, biting her squeaky rubber doll with her two rice-grain-like little teeth, and cooing happily to herself. Tara did not see Sheelo anywhere. She walked ahead without calling out and peered on the other side of the barsati, and immediately turned back in shock. Ratan had Sheelo in his arms and was kissing her on the mouth.
    They were startled on hearing Tara gasp. Tara didn’t say anything; she just picked up Munni and went down, her feet thudding on the stairs.
    After a few minutes Sheelo came downstairs as well. Tara didn’t speak to her. Sheelo said pleadingly, her eyes downcast, ‘He just grabbed me.’
    ‘Get out of here, you liar!’ Tara turned her face away.
    When Sheelo sat down quietly with her head bowed, Tara could not stand it anymore. She moved closer to Sheelo and said, ‘Have some shame, you stupid girl! You’re already engaged.’
    ‘So what?’ Sheelo replied, head down, raking the cement filling between the bricks with her toenail, ‘I hardly did anything.’
    ‘What didn’t you do?’ Lowering her voice, Tara said angrily, ‘If someone from the gali had seen you, they would have cut off all your hair and broken his bones too, you idiot. And they would have thrown us out of the gali. You’re so shameless!’
    After that evening, Tara began to detest Ratan. In the past Tara’s scowling had had little effect on Ratan; her tone would give her away, that there wasno bad feeling behind it. But now there was loathing in Tara’s eyes. She was angry with both Ratan and Sheelo. They had both fooled her.
    At their grandmother’s mourning ceremony, Sheelo had been given some money. Tara’s mother thought nothing of the present of two rupees and two sets of clothes, but it was proof of the fact that the elder daughter-in-law’s daughter was engaged while Bhagwanti’s daughter was not. It didn’t matter that Tara was only two-and-a-half months older than Sheelo; she was still older. Tara was also two years ahead of