The landless farmer

 

Harichand was a broad-shouldered, squarish man with an impressive bear paunch. Just like any other landless struggler in the rural society, shorn of any economic or social legacy, he had to pull his family cart in a way wherein the last step was just sufficient to push the next one, a painful but terribly aware living where the present grips you so hard that you barely get any time to either reflect over the past or muse over future. Clad in soiled dhoti and kurta he stockily squared up to the routine challenges of a poor household. He had many children and some of them grew up with us playing in the neighborhood.

One of his various vocations was to ply his tonga to the market town and carry cattle feed sacks for the farmers. He remember him walking stooped, cautiously, carrying a quintal of cattle feed sack on his back. The more the weight you can lift on your back, the lesser of it you have to carry in your mind. In addition to all this, for some years he rented a berries farm on the outskirts of Delhi. With the start of flowering, he would pile his horse-driven tonga with all the necessities of setting up a hut and start with his wife, leaving the children under the care of their grandmother.

His youngest son found the village primary school almost a prison and the yearly sojourn among the berry trees appeared the ultimate meaning of freedom. Harichand would use all tactics to deter his son from following the tonga. He started with shouting words and soon graduated to thrashing. It failed. He tried starting very early in the morning, thinking the little one would be asleep at the time. But the school-scared kid would smell his plan and he would keep awake all night. Then the concerned father tried to tire out his obstinate son by making him run after the tonga for many kilometers. On one occasion, he had to yield to the tiny runner after the latter had broken all previous records by following the tonga for almost ten kilometers. With this excellent focus and hard dedication, the little kid got freedom from the school for forever.

Then the times changed. The berries farm was gone for more lucrative land use. Now Harichand took farmland on lease within the village to make a living. He had a balding pate, snow white beard but stayed as robust as ever. Now his many children had children of their own. It was now a big family that couldn’t sustain at one place and they fell apart to take care of their own struggling course.

Poverty breeds further poverty. He kept working his own bit. He possessed the loudspeaker of a throat, very useful in scaring away the birds eyeing his fruits and vegetables. He used it to good effect in sending warnings to his children within a radius of one kilometer around the village, yelling their names, asking them to come home and attend to more important tasks than just playing. We played almost three-quarter of a kilometer from his humble house. Then his voice would come sailing over the trees, village school, the pond, threatening his children to immediately return.

He possessed a sword, but held it with a calm demeanor. We saw him standing with the weapon when a drunk Jat farmer tried to molest his adolescent girl. He stood composedly with the sword in hand while the offended girl gave a nice example of taking revenge herself by profusely hitting the erring man.

He also possessed a big bamboo bow and scores of clay balls to hit the enemy birds. We were inawe of his big bow and clay bombs. There was a rumor that he could catapult them to a distance of one kilometer.

During his last years he was leasing our twoacres of land to plant marigolds and vegetables. Then for the last two years he further sublet it to another farmer, taking the money in one lot, passing it to me in installments to have a slight economic advantage from the situation. That is all he saved from it. Just a chance to use that money for some months. I wasn’t aware of it and when I came to know this I took it as a little help that I could provide him. From the annual settlement, he still owed me INR 21000 from the lease amount. This time he hadn’t paid it on the promised date. So I thought of visiting his house. He was lying on a cot. ‘He has been having fever,’ they told me. From the folds of his dhoti—very near his genitals—he unfolded the roll of notes and handed over ten thousand rupees. It carried the sweat and smell of his private parts, the essence of his existence. ‘See, what are you forcing me to touch!’ I tried to maintain a funny touch. I asked them to drop the sweaty wad of notes in a polybag, intending to put it under the sunlight to dry.

He had kept it safe like it was his treasure. There were risks in the needy joint family. ‘What about the remaining?’ I asked. ‘I’ll give if I get well!’ he exclaimed ironically. ‘Of course you will get well! What can a simple fever do to your robust figure?’ I assured him. He sighed resignedly. Once outside the house, his son told me, ‘He has liver cancer.’ Harichand couldn’t fulfill his last promise because he died soon after. He died in early sixties, carrying a little debt to me and a few others. As a friendly gesture I freed him from the unsettled issue. That’s all I could do for him.