Three Portraits of Village Life: Langda, the Untimely Rains and the Lost Boy

 **April 2005**

He was nicknamed Langda, being born with an afflicted, paralysed leg—or perhaps paralysis would not be a suitable word. It was a case of polio.

Thus, naturally and unceremoniously, as was the norm with the village society of which he was a part, he was nicknamed with the slang word *Langda*.

Of course, so to say, he didn't mind it.

Why would he?

Because the name involved the scuttle and lurch in his gait.

If you think that his childhood was tragic, then forget it.

For, given his hip-hopping gait, it was doubly interesting for himself as well as for others.

But then an infirmity becomes an infirmity, as per the full version of its definition, only during adolescence.

This feeling of loss accelerated with his rise towards the peak of his youth.

It is, however, another matter that it was to come downslope as he would descend towards middle age and then reach old age, when he would hardly remember that he was a lame man.

Like most of his community, he was illiterate.

He smoked, took opium and drank the cheapest of liquors of the local varieties and brands, most of them adulterated.

That, of course, did not in any way obstruct his habit of hard work as a wage earner.

He worked a full man's worth even after his fill of wine.

He usually lost his senses and went brawling, shouting and insinuating against the foes who would reprimand him, wandering through the streets during the nights.

It would happen most often.

And his biggest target was the village headman, against whom he directed his ire.

He shouted for public causes—for the mud in the streets, for water, for electricity.

If somebody, before contracting him as a labourer, showed even the slightest seeds of doubt about his drinking, then he vented his fury against his favourite subject.

"You talk of *sharab* and bring it my way! I can urinate it out! Such a master I am of it!"

He would gesticulate.

* * *

In the beginning of April, while wheat harvesting is at its peak, there are sometimes thundershowers which cause goosebumps to arise on the hardened skins of peasants.

And during one such late night, when the waning smile of the moon was shining in the sky, clouds arrived with thunderclaps and lightning.

It was a scattered mass—noisy, with lightning flashing and big piles of clouds here and there.

They played with the moon, spattering down big drops of rain here and there.

The farmers sleeping in the open ran to the mosquito-free, warm interiors of their houses, harbouring fears for the unharvested wheat sheaves lying in the open fields.

The big banyan tree's aerial roots swayed like a beard, and its foliage made a noise like a murthy mountain stream.

The broad, delicate leaves of marshweed, meanwhile, exaggerated the amount and intensity of the rain, for they tittered and tattered with such sounds.

* * *

To begin with, he was a sickly child with a malnourished body.

His pale face, sunken eyes and bony limbs betrayed a certain outcastness and aloofness.

Up to his fourth year, he hadn't learnt to walk, nor did he tread on all fours like normal toddlers.

With his limp head hanging in a sitting posture, he moved his famished bottom ahead by protruding one leg forward, supported by a palm on the ground.

He didn't speak either.

Moving thus, curiously and noiselessly, he seemed to have been left far, far behind.

And he never appeared to be in a hurry to catch up with the rest of the people and children moving at a smart pace.

Somehow, he learnt to walk and speak, and did both with a kind of peculiar deliberation and urgency that made people dub him a poor kid.

Very weak he was, but his height increased quite speedily.

He grew so tall that, given his thinness, people laughed at his gait.

He moved with his feet protruding outwards at sharp angles.

During these initial years, he even did odd tasks for others, so people, out of beneficence, called him a good, poor kid.

By his fifteenth year, he had grown to nearly six feet.

His bony limbs and pale face gave him a shuddering appearance.

His ears were triangular, and so was his face, while his grey eyes were full of wretchedness and abstract pity.

His early youth meant smoking opium in the lonely, unrelated chambers of his tall, frail body.

Some convictions of his own were growing up.

He drew some solace from secretly doing something unpleasant, even if that meant no gain to him.

Stealing some trivial things which might catch the fancy of a growing boy was somehow understandable.

But what was inexplicable was his tendency to do harm for no cause of his own.

Once, he broke the pitcher and cups belonging to a peasant family, left in the fields.

Another time, he burnt the working clothes of another farmer that had been left near a tree at the corner of a field.

He did this with a certain relish.

And after committing some other such acts of destruction, he took a very, very high dose of opium—far too much, in fact, for his weak constitution—and wandered around like a camel in sandy delirium in a desert.

A mammoth criminality was lying in the frail womb of his lonely, unsocial body.

Out of his senses, he wandered, muttering and babbling all sorts of nonsense.

He appeared even more dangerous than any robust, knife-wielding ruffian.

For there is some daring, some clue-giving life, some spirit, some connection to the world in the latter, which might forewarn others and even prevent him from committing some act of nasty, absurd criminality.

But this juvenile was dead to all such trappings.

His face and bearings connoted death.

To what degree he might fall secretly, there appeared to be no limit.

And society sensed such a foe.

There were worries about him.

Then he suddenly vanished from the scene, lost somewhere in the big, bad world.

Some say he is dead.

Some say he got ensnared in the clutches of the organ mafia, who took away his kidneys and liver.

Some attribute his absence to his joining some petty gang of criminals.

But who knows when and how he might turn up?