The sun was descending on the horizon.
Just as the heat of the burning sun cooled down, and the sunlight acquired a golden hue, Kaati called Bhindi and Deepo, “Come on, let’s go home now.”
Bhindi, one farm-bed away, and Deepo, at a distance of two farm-beds, were bent down, collecting remains of wheat heads. Hearing Kaati’s voice, both stuck their necks out like peacocks and straightened their backs. They separated the wheat heads from the stems and put the heads in their slingbacks. Deepo spoke with a parched throat, “Let’s tie them up. You always get impatient.’ And they headed towards their bundles which lay close to the water channel under the malha tree
“Why do you hustle so much? Are you going on your muklawa?” Deepo asked Kaati, a smile on her dry lips as she alluded to the ceremonial visit of a bride to her in-laws after marriage. Deepo was Kaati’s distant sister-in-law by relation. Seeing Kaati silent, she again tried to provoke her, “Though your muklawa is around the corner, a year or two away, your youth is already blossoming.”
She tried to feel Kaati’s breast with her outstretched hand. Kaati jumped away and said, “Get away, what are you doing?”
Just as she stepped back, Bhindi threw both her hands on Kaati’s neck and said, “Yes, Bhabhi! She is growing a hump like a Sahari male buffalo.”
“Hold on, my co-wife, I’ll show you the hump,” Kaati threw away her slingback and started wrestling with her in the wheat field. Bhindi was more like a friend to her than the daughter of her Taya. Drunk on their youth, they didn’t care about the sharp stumps of the wheat stems.
“Stop it, you girls! What will a man say if he sees this!’” Deepo said shifting the wheat heads from her slingback to the bundle. All three lifted their bundles and began walking.
Kaati was walking ahead. Broken chappals on her feet, her clothes were patched too. But her thighs moving like a vine and her swaying waist almost made her look like a princess. Coming out of the field on the pathway, she wrapped the torn chunni around herself but never did the folds of the chunni contain the tides of her youthfulness. Her wheatish complexion had reddened with the heat of the day. The sweat on her rotund features and her nose-pin were shining alike. She tried to tuck the stray lock of her hair behind her ear repeatedly, but it would fall back on her face again.
All three of them were walking towards the village playfully when they heard the sound of a tractor coming from behind them, growing closer and closer. It belonged to Jinder of the zaildars and with him was his seerie, Bhana Mazhabi. Closing in on them, Jinder mischievously blew the horn twice. Kaati was behind the other two and just as she heard the “tin-tin” of the tractor, she looked back that very moment. A smile spread across her dusty lips; her white teeth looked like an ear of baby corn shorn of its husk. Kaati’s gait gained lilt and her waist swirled all the more. First, Jinder slowed down the tractor and as he neared them, he pressed the brakes and quietly said to his seerie Bhana, “Bhaneya! Ask them if they want a lift …’
Then Bhana announced loudly, “Come, sit, sit in the trolley. There’s enough space, you’ll reach home sooner.”
All three of them threw their bundles into the trolley, climbed in and Jinder drove off.
Steering the tractor, stroking his ashen grey moustache, Jinder frequently looked back. Every time he did so, Kaati’s eyes glimmered with joy, as if a Ghumiar girl had becharmed a Nawab’s son. Passing by the banyan tree standing on the mud pits, the tractor reached near the gurdwara. Kaati pinched Bhindi’s flank. When the tractor reached at the footway going to their house, Bhindi called loudly, “Let us down here, brother.”
Jinder had already pressed the brakes and the tractor halted. They picked up their bundles from the trolley and walked off. Deepo and Bhindi walked in front and Kaati followed behind them. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel and one on the gear, Jinder kept staring with his red eyes at Kaati for quite some time. Kaati spat on the ground, blew her nose, smiled, rounded her lips and followed her mates. Jinder stroked his moustache again and drove off. Bhana laughed through his dust-laden moustaches and said, “How beautiful the Chamiari is! How frisky she is! Zaildara, get her if you can.”
But Jinder quietly accelerated.
Carrying their bundles, they came to the common roofed well in front of their vehra. Sitting on a log at the door of their dharamshala, Lakha was moving his hands over his well-tied turban. Seeing Kaati, he tried to spot something in her eyes. But Kaati frowned and turned her face away. Lakha heaved a sigh, stood up and continued ogling at Kaati’s gait as she walked away.
As they entered the lane towards their vehra, Kaati said, “How he, the bulbous-nosed, stared at us! God! Can our boys of seeries and daily-wagers afford to have such fancies? What is he trying to be …”
Deepo agreed, “When you don’t even have a grain of wheat to eat at home and yet you clamour for delicacies …”
Now Bhindi also joined in to concur with them both, “How smugly he sat like a bull. Why doesn’t he go to his work? Standing there, like a superintendent …”
They turned towards their home at the end of the lane and Lakha kept standing there.
Excerpted with permission from ‘Cry of the Sky’ by Bhura Singh Kaler in Gangrene: Punjabi Dalit Short Stories, translated by Akshaya Kumar and Navdeep Singh, Penguin Random House India.
