‘Tom-tom — Tom-tom — Tira-tira — Tira-tira — Tom-tom— Tom-tom. . ’ he heard the drum beat. He moved his head towards the door and tried to listen. But he feigned as though he were fast asleep. If his wife should see? He even tried to snore. His grandchildren passed near him. The little one, the last born of the second son, cried, ‘Grandpa, Grandpa!’ He almost felt like smiling back. But he couldn’t — he wouldn’t. Somehow closed eyes on a hot morning is so enchanting. Funny and bright like a juggler’s show.
‘Tom-tom — Tom-tom — Tira-tira — Tira-tira— Tom-tom. . Listen, villagers, listen! After the meal, everybody should assemble at the Patel’s — Everybody — Important Business — Tom-tom — Tira-tira — Tom-tom — Tom-tom. . ’
‘Important business! Important business!’ Dattopant said to himself. ‘What could that be? After all, everything is over now. Thotababa’s Tail-End field was already auctioned by the government. Poor chap! One of the richest fellows in the village his father was, in my father’s time. Owned half the cotton-fields. They said gold was used to pave his floors. Thotababa! We told him, didn’t we, not to get indebted to that Parsi? But he wanted money — money. If not, how could he pay for his pilgrimages, marriages, mistresses?. . And now. . Ha! Ha! Poor Thotababa! Ambudevi is Bhattoji’s mistress now. Where there’s money, there are women. Juicy girl too, Ambudevi. But poor Thotababa! Grind the corn, brother, grind. Then there was that affair of the toddy contracts. It was to be auctioned. Patel, Patwari, Revenue Collector, Police Inspector, Zamindars, motor cars, peons, shouts. Who gets the contract? The Parsi! Why, for every rupee we can pay he can pay two. He comes from Bombay, they say. And he has the Red-man’s money. He throws us money and buys back our cotton. Pays for the seeds, and pays for the births, deaths, funerals, all. And for the revenues too, with mortgages. Only Sampathji said, ‘I’ll go to the town and sell it at eight annas a maund more.’ Patel’s visit. Patwari’s visit. ‘Oh, don’t you do that!’ Sampathji’s bulls stayed in his byre, but his stick ran at the Parsi. Missed him! Pity. Be done with him and his money! One would have had a good drink after.
‘Hè, buffalo! How long will you lie buried in your bed?’ It was his wife. She was sweeping the floor, and the dust was already entering his nostrils.
‘Hè? Is it morning?’ he asked, yawning and cracking his knuckles as though he were just waking up.
‘Morning! The sun is high enough to char you to skin and bone, hè!’
‘I’ll rise.’ He drew up his eyelids painfully. From the opening in the roof, the sunshine poured like boiling pus— thick, steaming, white. The whole heaven is a hellish white bubo, he used to say. How it pours and pours — nothing but pus. It rains pus. And the earth — it drinks the pus, imbibes it eagerly, avidly, sucking. .
Rising up, Dattopant folded his little mat and putting it in the corner walked out into the courtyard with his bed-sheet. It served as blanket at night and upper cloth during the day. The streets were empty, and the flies were busy humming round the dung and the dustbins. The earth, tanned, hard earth, was lying flat, breathless, benumbed. From the neem by the street came the acrid, fermented smell of oozing liquor. On the high palms two vultures sat, with their fleshy necks, bald as though they had eaten their own skin. Grhita, grhita, grhita they hurled their ominous grunts. In Sayyaji’s house they were killing a cock for the match-maker. The pipers would soon begin the music.
The world seemed full of hot silences, and — noises — noises.
From near the temple came the gasp and grunt of the bailiff-drum: ‘Tom-tom — Tom-tom — Tira-tira — Tira-tira — Tom-tom— Tom-tom. . ’
‘Important business,’ said Dattopant to himself, ‘important business,’ and walked down the street towards the Devil’s Ravine for the morning performances.
In Khandesh the earth is black. Black and grey as the buffalo, and twisted like an endless line of loamy pythons, wriggling and stretching beneath the awful heat of the sun. Between a python and a python is a crevice deep as hell’s depths, and black and greedy and forbidding as demons’ mouths. They seem to gape their mouths to gobble you. . to grapple you like crocodiles on a blazing day and drag you to the bottom of cavernous depths. Baye — Baye — Baye they seem to cry inaudibly, eager, rapacious, hungry. And they stream out breaths. The breaths are white and parched, curling and twisting and falling back like vermin. They search for a leg, a hand, an eye, a mouth, just to pull you into the abysm of the earth. Field on field is nothing but pythons and abysms — crocodiles waiting for their prey, vermin searching for a carcass. Then, suddenly, there is a yawning ravine in the endless immensity of the python-world, the chief python of pythons, with his venom flowing in red and blue and white. The red venom shines in the sands. The blue one lies in the shadow. And the white is the bubbling, steaming water that crawls over the bed, as though the pus of heaven had turned liquid. The blood of the earth mingles with the pus of the skies — to bear cotton.
Rows and rows of cotton. Thin, unmoving, bone-like plants, with little skulls in their hands that split and crackle with the heat of the sun. Like the purity of the soul is their substance, within the twists and holes of the skull. But within their purity is the hidden venom — venom again! Black seeds, small knoblike seeds, sitting beside one another as though in clasped conspiracy. The pods would go to the dust, the cotton to the Red-man, and the peasant will have small knob-like seeds, hard as the river-stones, to munch and to crack. There are no stones in Khandesh!
The sun will hit him on the head, the earth maul him by the legs, the Red-man eat all his soul — and within the black and blue of the ravines, the white venom will flow to the end of time. The trains of the Red-man rush towards the city.
Finding none of his usual friends in the ravine — the sun was already high over the north-east — Dattopant hastily finished his excretions and ablutions and ran back to the village eager to hear about this ‘important business’. He passed by Dhondopant’s house but his son said he had gone to Kantur to see his second daughter, and her new male child. Then he turned round the Flag-Platform, and entered Sonopant’s courtyard. His wife was grinding jawari, and the old man was in the byre chopping hay. Dattopant hurried there.
‘Hè, brother, what is it all about?’
‘Nothing. I think it’s about the quarrel between Ramaji and Subbaji. You know, about the Cornerstone?’
‘But, on my mother’s soul, I thought they were going to the court?’
‘No, I met the Patel yesterday. He said it would be settled by us. But I didn’t know though it would be today.’
‘No, brother, I think it’s not that!’
‘Must be that. If not what else?’
‘No, brother, no. I heard an owl hoot on the roof. I know it is not that.’
‘Then let’s ask Govindopant.’
‘Well, let us go.’
He left the hay on the flank, and they went across the courtyard to Govindopant’s back wall.
‘Hè, Govindopant!’
‘Hè. . Hè. . ’
‘What’s that tom-tom about, brother?’ Govindopant, a tall man, with long, thick whiskers, and hanging cheeks, rose up from behind the wall, his hands soiled with clay. He was plastering the cattle-shed.
‘Don’t know. Heard the Police Inspector had come on his horse.’