‘Let them come,’ cried the villagers. ‘This time we will not kill just one but twenty.’
For the first time the students became a little alarmed, and urged, ‘No killing. Definitely no more killing.’ But the men were eager, like hunters who had sighted a plump herd of sambar. They pranced around, arrows at the string, waiting, ready, fearless. They were expert bowmen for the only meat they could afford to eat was what they shot, the occasional deer or monkey. Usually wild birds and even mongeese.
In the midday silence the sound of the approaching police cars grew and soon even the hopeful hunters realised that this was not just a jeep and a handful of constables, but a whole retinue of armoured vehicles. Even they realised that bows and arrows would not work this time. ‘Bring out the cows. Block the road with them,’ went round the call. ‘The policemen are Hindus. They will not hurt the cows.’ Now the police procession could be seen as a cloud of dust approaching like a slow grey ball. Putting their bows aside, men went running to the stalls and byres. Women dashed for their milking cows. Children emerged from huts hauling little calves. Field workers unhitched their bullocks and by the time the police arrived the road to Naxalbari was blocked with cattle.
The police rounded the corner. The first vehicle, a large armoured lorry, paused briefly. The villagers, watching from behind their cattle herd, began to feel smug and look triumphant. There came a shouted order from the rear of the police column and with a clatter of rifle fire, the first vehicle plunged into the cattle herd. There followed dull thuds as the jeeps and lorries banged against cows. The cows began rushing, swerving, falling, howling, galloping tail high, squirting shit, until they burst the thorn fences and escaped into the surrounding paddy fields and stands of maize.
There fell a small shocked silence from the watching villagers then the cry went up, ‘The women then. They will never dare to shoot women.’ Wives, mothers, daughters, grannies, urged by the men, came rushing to fill the gap left by the fleeing cattle. Shivarani thrust her way through the women till she got to the front and stood there. The sight of her, tall and fearless at their head, filled the women with greater courage and determination. They pressed around Shivarani, defying the oncoming police lorries that rumbled towards them. When the first lorry halted, policemen leant from it and pointed weapons at the women. ‘Stop this,’ yelled Shivarani. ‘Don’t kill women. What are you thinking of?’
There came the crack of a shot and Shivarani staggered as she felt pain pierce her shoulder. There followed a hail of bullets. In agony, Shivarani ducked and dodged as behind her she heard people screaming. She felt her strength going but forced herself to stay standing so that she could shield the bodies of the smaller women at her back. The pain was terrible but she forced her body to stay upright. She could hear a young girl crying. The women were scrambling to get away, and the police were still firing.
Then something came between Shivarani and the steady and menacing approach of the police. Behind, above, ahead she could hear the sound of shooting and screaming, could feel the desperate struggling of people trying to escape as Bhima put himself between her and the bullets. His body gave a heave as a bullet struck it, and then he crashed backwards, knocking her to the ground and falling on top of her. She felt warm fluid – Bhima’s blood – pour between her thighs.
The shooting stopped. The silence that followed was broken by screaming from the injured and the sobbing of women.
Koonty had joined a traditional Hindu joint family consisting of Pandu’s father, Kuru Dadoo, and his younger son known as DR Uncle. There was also DR’s wife, Gadhari, and their three sons.
Pandu told Koonty, ‘It is OK for you to laugh and run even when my father is there. He is very modern and won’t think you are being disrespectful.’ And when she still seemed sad, he told her, ‘Perhaps you don’t like to live in a joint family situation. Would you like us to go somewhere else? To a house of our own?’ The idea filled him with dismay, but he felt ready to do anything to make Koonty happy. She shook her head. It was not that. ‘What is it then? What is it? What is it?’ But he could not discover.
Kuru Dadoo was delighted that Koonty had joined his household and felt sure that he would be able to make her happy, even when her own husband could not. He had known her since she was little and continued to pinch her cheeks or pop sweetmeats into her mouth as though she was still a little girl. ‘What is the matter with my little Koonty?’ he would laugh. ‘Why is she looking so sad?’ He would pluck a flower from the hibiscus bush and hand it to her saying, ‘For your hair, my pretty little daughter.’ He had two sons and three grandsons. This was his first little girl and he was making the most of her. Gadhari watched with envy for Kuru Dadoo had never popped a dudh peda into her mouth. He had never given Gadhari flowers for her hair.
Koonty’s longing for the baby to be rescued from the river was tinged with fear because they would see the gold chain round its neck and discover her shameful secret. But days, then weeks, passed and this did not happen, and a few months later she became pregnant. To the relief of her family, her sadness lifted. ‘If this baby is a little girl,’ she thought, ‘I will know that the goddess has forgiven me. It will mean that Durga rescued my baby from the river and is giving her back to me in a miraculous way. I will not be the killer of my baby after all if this one is a little girl.’ She stopped waiting for the baby lost in the river to be brought back to her because the goddess had replaced it in her womb. She decided to call her daughter ‘Shobita’ because that means ‘Sun’, for this baby was really the child of the Sun God, and not Pandu’s at all.
When Koonty’s baby was born everyone laughed because it was a boy and there were three in the household already but then, as Kuru Dadoo pointed out, ‘You can never get too many boys.’ But Koonty’s dark mood returned. ‘Postnatal depression,’ Meena Gupta tried to console Pandu. ‘She will get over it, don’t worry,’ but Pandu was not convinced. In the end, to take his mind off his young wife’s gloom, Pandu, indulging in a lifelong dream, sold the Hatibari chandelier, took the money and travelled to South India, where he bought twelve pure-bred Jersey cows.
The villagers arrived in their hundreds to see the gold-haired, dark-eyed beauties being unloaded from the lorries. They laughed aloud at the sight of the wide, fair brows and hornless heads. They bent and giggled in wonder at the vastness of their bouncing udders.
‘Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,’ was all Pandu seemed able to say, overcome with awe at the gracious appearance and prospective vast milk yields. ‘We must all work hard to make sure these pretty creatures do not suffer in our heat.’
Ice, prepared in the fridge, was crushed, poured into hot-water bottles and tied on the heads of the twelve new Jerseys. They stood in a mournful row at the shady end of their byre, looking silly under their ice-water bottle hats, water trickling down their eyelashes, their tails whacking exhaustedly at the attacks of fierce flies that were quite new to them. The darjee was called and set to work on his pedal Singer, stitching hessian coats for the cows to stop the flies from pestering them and Pandu had them dressed up till they looked like European women in frocks and hats.
Kuru Dadoo was shocked by his son’s new enthusiasm. ‘A zamindar should be out there, shooting tigers and sticking pigs, not spending his day in the dairy like some gwala.’
‘They are so beautiful, Papa. Look how they have dark round their eyes as if they have been painted with kajal. And don’t you admire their golden colour?’
Kuru Dadoo snorted with scorn. ‘If you wish for a beautiful golden creature with painted eyes why not go to Free School Street and find yourself a Nepali prostitute like I used to do.’
‘I prefer the local girls. And these cows are like pets.’
‘If you wish to keep pretty creatures you should go for cheetahs. My father had a hunting pair of great beauty and danger. Clever also. He never had such hunting luck when he was only accompanied with dogs. Shall I contact the zoo and see if they can obtain some for you?’
Gadhari was furious