Godaan

Bhola was engaged for the second time in his life. His life had turned quite bland without a woman. When Jhuniya was around she remembered to serve him his meals and organise his smoke and other little necessities. With her gone, he had none to attend to him. His daughters-in-law had their hands full with things to do around the house. An engagement appeared to be the only pragmatic solution to his problems. As luck would have it, he came to know of a young widow, Nohri, whose husband had died barely three months ago. The woman was also the mother of a small boy. She appeared as the perfect quarry and Bhola snapped her up real fast. He didn’t flag in his efforts till he tied the knot with her.

Till he got married again, everything in the house was the fiefdom of the daughters-in-law. They ran the house as per their wishes and fancies. During the six months after his son Jangi and his wife left for Lucknow, it was his other son Kamta’s wife who had a free run of the house. She presided over the place like a queen and in the last two or three months, had succeeded in stashing twenty to thirty rupees in her secret account by selling a seer or two of milk on the sly. The control now passed into the hands of Nohri, her step mother-in-law. She detested it and their bickering started from day one. Their rivalry took an ugly turn as gradually Bhola and his son were also sucked into the battle.

The daily fighting came to such a head that a partition and division of property seemed the only way out for peace. The unfortunate fact was that in such circumstances, right from times immemorial, a division does not come before a violent showdown. The tradition was followed dutifully in this instance as well. Kamta was a young man. Bhola’s clout over him arose from his position as his father and head of family. However, with the entry of a new woman as his wife the respect he commanded from his son was severely dented. Kamta could not bring himself around to accept the reality of a new and younger wife of his father. The ensuing fight saw Kamta raining a number of blows on his father after throwing him down on the floor in a wrestling tackle. Thus declaring his victory, he forbade him from touching anything in the house. The neighbours were with Kamta on this as Bhola’s remarriage had made him some sort of a pariah in their eyes.

Thus banished, Bhola spent the remaining part of the night under a tree but went to Nokhe Ram with his appeal for a hearing the first thing in the morning. Bhola’s hamlet was within the jurisdiction of Nokhe Ram and he was the right person to listen to his complaint as the headman or man-in-authority in those parts. Nokhe Ram never had any sympathy for Bhola but since he was accompanied by a vivacious woman, he quickly agreed to offer him shelter in a small outhouse near the cattle shed. In any case, he was on the lookout for an experienced hand to tend to his cows. Bhola was appointed for three rupees a month and a seer of milk daily.

Nokhe Ram was a squat, long nosed and big eyed dark man. He wore a large turban and a flowing tunic over which he wrapped a loose quilt whenever he stepped out of his house in the winter months. He loved oil massages therefore his clothes bore a sticky oiliness which was dirty as well. He had a huge family. His seven brothers and their children were dependent on him. His own son was a student of class nine and studied English; his fancy lifestyle was a drain on his expenses. Rai sahib gave him a salary of twelve rupees a month but his expenses exceeded a hundred rupees. That was the reason why once a villager landed in his trap, he didn’t let go easy and extracted the maximum he could from him. When his salary was six rupees, he wasn’t as slimy as he was now that it had been doubled to twelve. The increase in salary bolstered his desire for a better life and his expenses shot through the roof as a result of which his exploitive nature became still more aggressive. This boomeranged on him because seeing his attitude, Rai sahib froze any further hike in his salary.

Almost everyone recognised his clout one way or the other; even Jhinguri Singh and Datadin accepted his superior position. The only one who stood up to him was Pateshwari. If Nokhe Ram had airs of being a Brahmin who could manipulate a Kayastha like a puppet, Pateshwari was of the view that as a Kayastha, he could afford to throw his weight around with his expertise in the field of letters. Who could challenge him on his turf as he wasn’t an employee, however glorified, of the zamnidaar but an employee of a government in whose kingdom the sun never set? There was a subtle competition between the two. If Nokhe Ram kept a fast every fortnight on the full moon and fed five Brahmins that day, Pateshwari also held during the Satyanarayan ceremony every full moon and fed ten Brahmins.

When Nokhe Ram’s son was well into his adolescence, he craved for the day when he would somehow scrape through the tenth class so that he could fix him up as a clerk somewhere. For this, he had already started making rounds of the district officials to deliver gifts as a token of his respect which he could reap at an appropriate time.

But Pateshwari was one over Nokhe Ram in another respect. There were strong rumours that the widow of one of his servants who he had sheltered in his house was actually his concubine. When Bhola came knocking at his door that morning, he smelt an opportunity to catch up with Pateshwari in that field as well.

He went out of the way to be kind to Bhola and assured him of his support. “You stay in my outhouse near the catteleshed, Bhola. Don’t worry; if you need anything just let me know. You have a young wife; let me see if I can find some engagement for her as well. Sifting the corn, cleaning the granary, there is a lot of work. I am sure she can be of help.”

Bhola persisted with his appeal- “Sir, please talk to Kamta at least once. You can ask him if he was right in behaving with me the way he did. I built the house, I purchased the cows and now he pockets everything and shows the road to me. If this not injustice, what is? Sir, you are the big chief. Shouldn’t this issue be decided in your presence?”

“Bhola, you can’t win in a war of words with him. He will get his just desserts; leave that to God. No one prospers on ill gotten gains. They call the world hell only because there’s so much sinning going around here. No one cares for ethics and justice. But remember God knows everything. He is watching over everything. He knows your deepest desires. Nothing is hidden from Him; that’s why he is called omnipotent. Nobody can escape His wrath. God willing, you will be better off here than there.”

After some time, Bhola left Nokhe Ram and went to Hori fishing for sympathy but Hori came up with a long list of his own woes.

“Every relationship is changing, brother. You sweat it out for your kids but that doesn’t mean anything to them. As soon as they grow up they turn against you. Take my own Gobar for example, it’s been ages since he fought with his mother and left home. There’s not a squeak from him. No letter, message, nothing! For all you know, we are as good as dead for him. My daughter’s wedding is on us but does he care? I have mortgaged my land for a loan of two hundred rupees; what’s got to be done has to be done. What one has to go through for children?”

Soon after he turned his father away from home, Kamta realised what a big help the old man was. Getting up early in the morning to prepare the feed for cows, milking them and later transporting the milk to the market place, attending to the cows once again immediately after returning from the market and milking them again in the evening; a fortnight was sufficient to bring his belligerence face to face with cold reality. The husband and wife had a blistering argument. She told him squarely that she didn’t marry him to serve as a cook in his house. “If I am a burden to you, I can still go back to my father’s place,” she said. Kamta developed cold feet; he didn’t want to add the task of managing the kitchen to his overflowing responsibilities. A servant was appointed to attend to odd jobs around the house but the arrangement was short lived as he was caught trying to sell off small portions of the hay and cattle feed from their store. He was given the marching orders. The husband and wife had yet another blistering showdown and a few days later the lady stomped out of the house, straight to her father’s home. Kamta panicked and came running to Bhola, pulling every trick in the book to appease him. He said, “Dada, please forgive me for all the foolish things I have done. Please come back and take over your house. I promise to go your way.”

Bhola resented living in Nokhe Ram’s house as a menial servant. The cordial hospitality extended to him petered out after the first few months. Nokhe Ram would often order him to fill up his chillum or tidy up his room which Bhola found demeaning. He realised that disagreements or fights in one’s own home didn’t lead to subservience to another. He felt he could still maintain his dignity despite disturbances if he went back to his own home.

His wife Nohri blew her top when she learnt of his intentions.

“So you are ready to eat humble pie to return to those who kicked you out? Have you no sense of shame or self respect?”

“I am not living a life of luxury here either.”

“Well, if that’s how you look at it, you go ahead and humiliate yourself. I am not going anywhere. I stay put.”

Bhola anticipated her opposition to this idea; he had a fair inkling of the cause for her resistence. In fact that had a major bearing on his decision to go back home. Here he was ignored and sidelined, whereas Nohri had a free run of the house. Even the servants and odd hands around the house recognised her special status. Her reply fuelled his simmering anger but he felt completely powerless. She might have followed him back if he had shown enough spine and walked away without her as Nokhe Ram didn’t have the courage to shelter her so brazenly. He always needed a smokescreen to manoeuvre and snare his victim but Nohri knew Bhola only too well.

Bhola begged her- “Nohri, please try to understand; don’t be so obstinate. You don’t have any daughter-in-law problems anymore; all authority rests in your hand now. Don’t you realise, we are cutting such a sorry figure before our community by working as menials in someone else’s house?”

She cocked a snook at him and said, “You go if you haven’t had enough as yet. Who am I to stop you? Perhaps, you find your son’s abuse amusing; well, I don’t. I am quite content as a menial.”

Bhola was forced to stay back, much against his wishes. Kamta went to his wife and cajoled her into coming back. Meanwhile the buzz about Nohri went unabated. She wore nice sarees! Well, why not? These were mere fringe benefits of staying in Nokhe Ram’s house!

Sobha was the village jester, the local know-all. He had the knack of commenting without stating the obvious. One day he came across Nohri and made a wisecrack which she promptly reported to Nokhe Ram. Sobha was summoned by the village elders and given a severe reprimand, the likes of which he couldn’t forget for a long time.

Similarly Lala Pateshwari had a brush-in with her at a later date. It happened in the early days of summer. Pateshwari was in his mango orchard, supervising plucking of the fruit. He saw Nohri pass by, all decked up in her finery and couldn’t resist calling out to her. “Nohri, sweetheart; come take a bite of these mangoes. They are real sweet, I promise you.”

Nohri was confused. She couldn’t understand if it was an innocuous invitation or a snide taunt. She thought he was making fun of her. She wanted people to recognise her eminent status and respect her accordingly. Haughtiness is a hair’s breadth away from a nagging doubt of other’s intentions. When people who walk with their head in the clouds have something to hide, they are easily touched to the quick. She wondered why he smiled at her. She wondered why everyone was so jealous of her; she didn’t look for favours from people who claimed to be pristine pure? Would they dare to accost her directly?

Nohri had gathered enough knowledge of the dirt floating around in the village and knew its soft underbelly rather well. She knew Pateshwari had the widow of one of his servants living in his backyard yet nobody ever talked disparagingly about it. Just because she was poor and not of a higher caste, people took her for granted and passed frivolous comments at her. As for Pateshwari, it was like father like son. His younger son, Ramesri had eagle eyes for Siliya. These men! They lusted after the poor girls but were proud of their high caste.

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