And old Rachanna’s wife, Rachi, can bear the sight no more, and she says, ‘In the name of the goddess, I’ll burn this village,’ and we say, ‘Nay, nay, Rachi,’ but she spits once, twice, thrice towards the Bebbur mound, and once, twice, thrice at the village gate, and she rushes towards the Pariah lines, and Lingamma and Madamma and Boramma and Siddamma follow her, crying, ‘To the ashes, you wretch of a village!’ and they throw their bodices and their sari-fringes on the earth and they raise a bonfire beneath the tamarind tree, and they light this thatch and that thatch, and we cry out, ‘Our houses, our houses,’ and they say, ‘Go, ye widows, don’t you see the dead and the dying?’ and more and more men and women go this side and that and say, ‘If the rice is to be lost let it be lost in the ashes,’ and granary and byre and haylofts are lighted. And then, as the flames rise, there are shots again, and the soldiers rush towards us, and we run and run, with the cows and the bulls and the pigs and the hens bellowing and squawking about us, and bats and rats and crows and dogs squealing behind us, through Pariah street and Potters’ street and the Weavers’ street did we rush, and slipping behind Rangamma’s backyard, we dodged among tamarind and pipal and lantana and cactus, and Seethamma and Madamma and Boramma and Lingamma and I waded through the Himavathy, and Rachamma and Rachamma’s child, and Ningamma and her granddaughter and her two nephews joined us; and then more and more women and men joined us, wounds in stomachs and wounds in breasts and wounds in faces, with bullets in thighs, and bullets in the toes, bullets in the arms — men carried men, men carried wounded women and yelping children, and they laved them in the river, and they gave them water to drink and when we were twenty-five or thirty in all, one of the city boys said, ‘Now we start, and we shall reach Maddur in an hour,’ and we rose and woke the children, and they rose with us, and beneath the hushed arching mangoes of the road, stumbling into ruts and groping over boulders, we trudged up the Maddur mountains, and not a roar came from the jungles and the moon and stars were bright above us.
And in Maddur there were policemen, and they, too, rushed to smite us, and we said, ‘We have borne so much, let them,’ and they spat and they kicked and they crushed and they banged, and then an old woman from here and a pregnant woman from there, old men, girls and children came running, Maddur women and Maddur old men, and they took us to this veranda and that, and gave us milk and coconut and banana. And they asked this about the fight and that, and of their sons who were with us, and their fathers and their husbands, and of Mota who had a scar on the right eye, and Chenna who was this-much tall, and Betel-seller Madayya, you couldn’t mistake him, he was so round, and we said what we knew and we were silent over what we knew not, and they said, ‘Ah, wait till our men come back, wait!’ But we said the police would not leave us alone and we’d go away but we’d leave our wounded with them. And we took our children and our old women and our men and we marched up the Kola pass and the Beda hills, and, mounting over the Ghats, we slipped into the Santapur jungle path, and through the clear, rustling, jungle night we walked down to the banks of the Cauvery. Across it was Mysore State, and as dawn broke over the hissing river and the jungles and the mountains, we dipped in the holy river and rose, and men came to greet us with trumpet and bell and conch, and they marched in front of us and we marched behind them, through the footpaths and the lanes and the streets. And houses came and cattle and dung smell and coconut shops and children and temple and all. They hung garlands on our necks, and called us the pilgrims of the Mahatma.
Then we ate and we slept, and we spake and we slept, and when they said, ‘Stay here, sisters,’ we said, ‘We’ll stay, sisters,’ and we settled down in Kashipura.
19
This Dasara will make it a year and two months since all this happened and yet things here are as in Kanthapura. Seethamma and her daughter, Nanja, now live in Malur Shanbhog Chikkanna’s house, and they eat with them, and grind with them, and Chikkanna, who has no children, is already searching for a bridegroom for Nanja. ‘I’ll find her a Mysore B.A.,’ he says, and day after day horoscopes come, and he says, ‘This one is better, but the other one I have heard about is better still.’ But Nanjamma, Pandit Venkateshia’s wife, Nanjamma, is alone in Temple Vishveshvarayya’s house, and she says, ‘I’m no cook, and yet that’s all I do for the Mahatma!’ That one was never born to follow the Mahatma, I tell you, she and her tongue and her arms, and her ever-falling sari. And Pariah Rachanna’s wife, Rachi, has found a place in Kanthenahalli Patel Chandrayya’s house, and she comes now and again to the Brahmin quarters with her pounded rice or her dung cakes. Her granddaughter, Mari, is working in Chenna’s house, and they say she’s already asked for in marriage by Kotwal Kirita’s son, the second one, who works with the elephant merchants from the north. And the marriage is to take place as soon as the father is out of prison. And Timmamma and I, we live in Jodidar Seetharamiah’s house, and they say always, ‘Are your prayers finished, Aunt? Are your ablutions finished, Aunt?’ before every meal. ‘Aunt, Aunt, Aunt,’ they always call us for this and that, and the children say, ‘The Mahatma has sent us his relations. There is the aunt who tells such nice stories,’ and that is me, ‘and the aunt of the pancakes,’ and that’s Timmamma, and they all laugh.
In the afternoons we all gather on the veranda pressing cotton wicks and hearing the Upanishads — it’s Temple Vishwanath’s son Shamu, who’s at the Mysore Sanscrit College, that does us the readings. Of course, it can never be like Ramakrishnayya’s. They say Rangamma is to be released soon. And maybe my poor Seenu too, though they have sent him to a northern jail, for what with his hunger strikes and Vandè Matarams, he had set fire to the hearts of all around him, and they gave him another six months. But Ratna had only one year, and the other day she came to spend a month with us, and she told us of the beatings and the tortures and the ‘Salute the Union Jack’ in the prison. That was not for long though, for the Mahatma has made a truce with the Viceroy and the peasants will pay back the revenues, the young men will not boycott the toddy shops, and everything, they say, will be as before. No, sister, no, nothing can ever be the same again. You will say we have lost this, you will say we have lost that. Kenchamma forgive us, but there is something that has entered our hearts, an abundance like the Himavathy on Gauri’s night, when lights come floating down the Rampur corner, lights come floating down from Rampur and Maddur and Tippur, lights lit on the betel leaves, and with flower and kumkum and song we let them go, and they will go down the Ghats to the morning of the sea, the lights on the betel leaves, and the Mahatma will gather it all, he will gather it by the sea, and he will bless us.