‘On the Godavery it’s not like this, is it, Father Siddayya?’
‘No, brother. But this wretch of a rain,’ and drawing away his hookah, he spat the south-west way.
But the south-west rain went flying away, and then came the north-east wind and it blew and blew until the thatches were torn away and the walls felled; and then it dripped, fine, endless, unflooding rain, whilst the fevers still came and went. Then Madanna’s second child died, too, and two days later Sidda’s father Ramayya, and Venka’s old mother — and just as children began to fall out of their mother’s wombs, children, men and women were going away and were buried or burnt on the banks of the Himavathy.
Then Pariah Rangayya said, ‘We’ll make three hundred rupees in all — three hundred rupees each, and we shall take our money and scuttle down the passes like kitchen bandicoots; and once we are there we’ll throw over a few clods of earth, and grass won’t grow where the rice is thrown. ’
‘Ah, you have much mind,’ laughed Siddayya quietly, sucking away at his hookah. ‘We all said that. ’
‘Why not, Uncle? We earn four annas a day for each man-hand and that makes one rupee twelve annas a week, and that makes seven rupees eight annas a month. That’s what we make, and throwing in the three rupees or so that our women make, and the little that the brats make, and taking from all this our five rupees for ragi and rice water, the rest is all with the sahib. And what after all is the railway fare we owe to the maistri — we still can have our three hundred rupees to take back with us? Now, isn’t that true, Uncle?’
‘Well, so be it!’ said Siddayya, and walked away silently. He knew that when one came to the Blue Mountain one never left it. But for Satanna and Sundarayya, who had not brought their women with them, and had sworn before the goddess, ‘Goddess, break my legs if ever we seek the toddy booth.’ For once you get there, the white, frothy toddy rises to the eyes, and as Timmayya’s Madayya beats the drum and everybody sings,
Laugh, laugh, laugh away,
The King of Heaven is coming,
Hè, the King of Heaven is coming,
Say, Bodhayya,
The King of Heaven is coming,
pot after pot of toddy is brought to you, and you drink and you sway your shoulders this way and that, and you cry out, ‘Well done! Well done for our Madayya!’
. And the King of Heaven is coming.
And money goes this way and that, and there are marriages and deaths and festivals and caste-dinners, and a sheep costs five rupees now, and Rama Chetty sells fine rice at three seers and a half a rupee, and butter is twelve annas a seer; and then so much for the maistri for procuring an advance, and so much for Butler Sylvester for stolen fuel, and so much for Bhatta’s interest charges, for if your woman has put forth a she-goat, a she-goat needs a he-goat, and a he-goat, well, you have to weigh it out in gold. And gold has wiles as a wanton woman has wiles. ‘Three hundred rupees! Well, if he’ll have it, let him have it. This much I know, nobody who sets foot on the Blue Mountain ever leaves it. That is her law!’
For ten years deaths and births and marriages have taken place, and no one that came from the Godavery has ever gone back to it. And the old sahib is dead, and the new one, his nephew, has not only sent away many an old maistri and man, but he has bought this hill and that, and more and more coolies have flowed into the Skeffington Coffee Estate. He is not a bad man, the new sahib. He does not beat like his old uncle, nor does he refuse to advance money; but he will have this woman and that woman, this daughter and that wife, and every day a new one and never the same two within a week. Sometimes when the weeds are being pulled or the vermin killed, he wanders into the plantation with his cane and pipe and puppy, and when he sees this wench of seventeen or that chit of nineteen, he goes to her, smiles at her, and pats her on her back and pats her on her breasts. And at this all the women know they have to go away, and when they have disappeared, he lies down there and then, while the puppy goes round and round them, and when the thing is over he takes her to his bungalow and gives her a five-rupee note or a basket of mangoes or plantains, and he sends her home to rest for two days. But when the girl says, ‘Nay,’ and begins to cry at his approach, he whistles, and the maistri is there, and he asks the maistri, ‘To whom does this wench belong?’ and the maistri says, ‘She’s Sampanna’s granddaughter,’ or, ‘She’s Kittayya’s young wife,’ or, ‘She’s to be married to Dasayya the one-eyed’; and that night Sampanna or Kittayya or Dasayya is informed of it, and if he doesn’t send her, a week’s salary is cut, and if he doesn’t send her then, still more money is cut, and if he still doesn’t send her, he’ll get a whipping, and the maistri will entice the wench with this or that and bring her to the master. It’s only when it is a Brahmin clerk that the master is timid, and that since the day Seetharam wouldn’t send his daughter. The master got so furious that he came down with his revolver, and the father was in the backyard and the young son shouted out, ‘The sahib is there, the sahib,’ and as Seetharam hears that, he rushes to the door, and the sahib says, ‘I want your daughter Mira,’ and Seetharam says, ‘I am a Brahmin. I would rather die than sell my daughter.’— ‘Impudent brute!’ shouts the sahib, and bang! The pistol-shot tears through the belly of Seetharam, and then they all come one by one, this maistri and that butler, and they all say, ‘Master, this is not to be done.’ And he says, ‘Go to hell!’ and he takes his car and goes straight to town to see the district superintendent of police and there is a case, and it drags on and on, and the sahib says he will pay one thousand five hundred rupees, two thousand rupees as damages to the widow and children. But he paid neither one thousand five hundred nor two thousand, for the Red-man’s court forgave him. But everybody in the Skeffington Coffee Estate knows now he’ll never touch a Brahmin girl. And when a Pariah says, ‘No,’ he hardly ever sends the maistri to drag her up at night.