A SPITBALL hits the back of my neck. I thought it would be different here. But it is the same. Always the same. ‘Chamar!’ my tormentors call loudly, though the rest of the class at least tries to stifle the laughter. ‘Filthy untouchable,’ says the son of a merchant who lives near me. ‘Why are you sitting in the front? Know your place. Get back to the village.’
My eyes remain fixed on the blackboard and the algebra being chalked by the teacher, pretending he is deaf. I know better than to acknowledge insults. ‘You are the smartest in the class,’ my mother says. ‘It is only right you should sit at the front.’ ‘I will,’ I tell her. ‘I promise.’ And this morning as I rode my bicycle the miles to my new high school and found my first class, I urged myself to keep that promise. That others think differently is beyond my control. My mother told me the new school was better and, though further away, the distance would be nothing compared with the journey I would soon be taking to university and beyond, far from our village, far from the curse of my family’s caste.
Gandhi-ji called us Harijan – ‘children of God’; my mother says they killed him for his beliefs. When I was born my mother gave me a name, though no one uses it but her. Outside the house, I am simply ‘Chamar’, the name of my sub-caste, for even among the lowest there are degrees of wretchedness. I am forbidden to wear shoes. I cannot enter the temple or pump water from the well. When someone takes pity and gives me a drink, I must use a clay cup that is destroyed afterwards so others will not be tainted. ‘What disease do I have?’ I ask my mother. ‘None,’ she says. ‘Am I stupid, or ugly or poor?’ ‘No,’ she answers stroking the hair back from my forehead, ‘you are the opposite; clever and handsome and richer than any of them. You will be a greater man than any in the village. You’ll see.’
But still I am called ‘broken’.
My father works in the south now, where they do not know his caste. He has gone far and there they call him by his name and he is happy. He is building the road that will one day bring Bihar into the twenty-first century, with the rest of India, and every month he sends home more money than others in my village see in half a year. But because his forefathers made hides into leather, I am considered less than a man, less than the beasts that are free to roam the streets, snarling traffic in their wake.
I am Chamar.
When a cow died and its bloated carcass fouled the village, only the hands of my family were considered soiled enough to touch its rotting flesh, though there are other Chamar who are lesser than us. But because my father works, because we eat meat twice a week, because our hut has a cement floor, and we stand with our eyes looking forward and not down at the dirt, the task was ours. Just as I learned early to swallow my pride, I swallowed the bile that rushed to my mouth at the stench of the maggoty cow when my mother and sisters and I dragged it to the edge of town near the railway tracks and set it alight. A crowd watched, scarves held to their noses, as the kerosene-fuelled flames rose and danced.
I will escape, somehow, the sins of the past. My mother made me promise.
‘Chamar!’ the merchant’s son hisses again.
‘Enough,’ the teacher says, turning from the board and clapping his hands in a cloud of chalk. ‘Need I remind you that the Dalit have a place here. Even the lowest and most hopeless of the scheduled classes are entitled to education.’ Such is the law, which he states as if reciting a multiplication table.
‘But Sir,’ says the merchant’s son. ‘Must he sit at the front? I am being polluted.’
‘Me too,’ says the boy on his left.
‘Also me,’ says the boy on his right.
I feel the hair on the back of my neck prickle as the rest of the class chimes in against me.
‘I’ll be forced to go to temple for cleansing. It takes hours. How can I study?’
‘Yes, cleansing,’ comes the chorus.
I am quiet, studying the teacher’s face. He is annoyed, but it is not the class that annoys him. It is me. The law requires him to teach me, but it cannot make him do so willingly. In the village many times the teachers made me sit outside the classroom and here, I now realise, even though I will be the best student in the class with scores almost always one hundred per cent, this Brahmin teacher will send me to the back row with the other Dalits.
He tilts his head towards me. ‘If you wouldn’t mind?’
It isn’t a question.
‘Sir,’ I nod respectfully, but I move slowly, thumping my books and scraping the bench against the floorboards as I rise and shuffle, eyes down, to the back of the room. When I am seated, the teacher continues his lesson. I open my book three chapters ahead and begin to read. When I look up, I see Babai glancing at me sideways under the cover of her hair. She offers a smile of comfort, her lips soft, the colour of roses.
I love her.
Babai is an untouchable, too. We two were the only ones from our village to win scholarships so we could continue our education. Her family is of a higher sub-caste. Their ancestors were washers of clothes, an occupation the family still pursues. Her mother takes in washing from the neighbours and her half-blind father works in Patna in a laundry.
I love Babai. I love her because she is strong, like me. I’ve loved her since we were children and she stood up to her mother, refusing to cook chapattis for her brothers when she had homework to do. I heard her mother’s screeches and the blows she rained upon her daughter. But Babai didn’t give in. She even managed to convince her father to allow her to continue studying, not marry as others from the street have done; barely thirteen, sent to service the rooms and flaccid organs of men old enough to be their grandfathers. Everyone knows about her family. About her father. When he was young he joined a gang of robbers who lived in the woods. They were caught and punished by the policemen in Bodh Gaya, blinded in one eye with bicycle spokes and acid. He is a fierce man, but he loves Babai. He beats his wife with his strap, but never his daughter.
I’ve loved Babai so long she feels like a part of me, though we have never spoken. I was proud when she excelled in the examinations and smiled when she refused to clean the shirt of a boy who tried to put her in her place. She doesn’t answer to ‘Dalit’, as even I sometimes do. She has a name. I decided long ago that she would be my wife.
Babai flashes her eyes towards me again, as if to give me courage.
I promise myself I will speak to her after school, on our way back to the village.
The school is five miles from home; there is a bus for those who can afford the fare. I never take it. I have my bicycle, which my father said would help set me free, and when I am riding fast and alone with the wind, the whirring wheels and oiled chain sing my name. Over dinner my mother assures me. ‘We’ll show them. How many in the village sit down to such fine dishes? How many of their sons score one hundred per cent and win scholarships?’ On the wall, next to Gandhi-ji and Ganesh, the elephant god, remover of obstacles, is a portrait of Ambedkar, the untouchable who became a politician and fought for the scholarships that now give us an education. My mother tells me to pray each day to all three. When she was young her father took her to see Gandhi-ji and taught her to believe in change. She has great hopes for me.
In the cover of trees only a mile from the school, I gather a small bouquet of wild flowers and wait for Babai. I know she will be walking today as she does not board the afternoon bus. As I spy her approach, I am suddenly shy and drop the flowers to the ground; weeds that somehow found their way into my hand.
Babai is a little startled when I emerge from the trees. I draw courage from the slight upward lilt of her lips as she lowers her eyes. From the rutted road come the rattles of light traffic, and the odd bony cow lows mournfully, but the school bus passed a while ago. We have the walk home to ourselves. I push my bike behind her, maintaining a respectful distance, trying to form the perfect sentence to break the silence.
I should like to offer her a ride, to have her sit on the crossbar as I do my sisters, to ride us both home, her long hair brushing my face. But I am Chamar; even washerwomen are polluted by my presence. Her father would kill us both if he saw her on my bike. He has killed for less. So I walk behind, watching the gentle rise and fall of her footsteps, the cloth of her sari clinging to her hips from the heat.
‘Why are you walking?’ she asks. I look back over my shoulder for someone else. ‘Why don’t you ride your bike?’
I cough and stutter, heat rising to my face. ‘I’m n … n … not following you.’ Stupid.
‘You were having so much fun on it this morning,’ she laughs, her hair swirling as she flicks her head around and smiles.
‘I … I was … it is second-hand, but it runs smoothly now, so fast …’ My shyness is forgotten until I catch a glimpse of an approaching cart and realise that, in my enthusiasm, I have crept dangerously close to her. ‘Sorry,’ I whisper, dropping back.
‘Don’t be,’ she says, turning towards me in a movement so full of grace and promise I feel like riding to the moon.
The cart passes and I edge closer again and say, ‘Maybe tomorrow I could give you a ride? I mean … not here, not on the road. Maybe we could … go a little bit down one of the forest paths.’ I’ve gone too far. If she repeats what I’ve said, I’ll be chased from Bihar with sticks. I hold my breath as a bus chugs up behind us.
‘I’d like that.’
We are nearing the end of the shelter afforded by the forest and the borders of our village approach, so I mount and ride away, grinning like the greatest of fools.
I hardly sleep for visions of Babai’s loveliness, her sitting in front of me on the bike, my arms around her waist, my wrists brushing the skin between her sari and blouse. I dream of her face leaning towards me, her lips, her soft lips, coming closer to mine.
I look for Babai in the woods on the way to school and wait so long that I’m late for class. She is already there. After, though, she ignores the bus and walks home. I ride in circles behind and follow her into the cover of the forest, where she stops and turns and smiles. I swing my front wheel back and forth in half-circles to keep my balance.
‘My mother gave me bus money this morning,’ she says.
‘Oh.’ I don’t tell her that all day I’ve been feeling as if bears had torn the heart from my chest. ‘Want a ride?’
We linger by a sidetrack and, with no one in sight, she climbs onto my bicycle and I pedal furiously as we race down the path. She squeals with delight and I feel as if perhaps I am a man, not broken at all. We stop at a clearing and I teach her how to ride, running beside her until she finds her balance. Her cheeks flush red as plums and we laugh like innocents who do not yet know their place in the world. When she tires of riding, we sit with our backs against a tree trunk and talk. We speak about our lives and ambitions and family. Her face is close to mine. I smell the rice-sweetness of her breath.
Her father is returning from Patna tonight, she says, and she’s already late. She mustn’t make him angry. Before we leave the shelter of the track I touch her hand. The thrill of electricity that races between us makes me jump. She does too.
‘What was that?’
‘That’s us,’ I say, as if I’m a holy man who understands everything. I only know that the two of us together make some kind of magic and I never want the long walk home through the forest to end.
Most days she walks and I wait for her, but other times I ride home alone and see her eyes dart towards me as the bus bumps past. That she even attempts to look at me in a bus full of high-castes makes my heart ache. We’re not able to sneak down the track often. The road to our village is not big, but India has many people, all coming and going somewhere.
One afternoon we carve our names into the bark of the old fig we’ve come to call our own. Afterwards, we sit side by side and, in my mind, I rehearse an elaborate kiss, something I so want to give her, and have wished to do as many times as there are stars in the heavens.
Babai brings the warmth of her hand to my cheek and runs her finger along my lips.
‘You have a moustache,’ she giggles.
I nod, afraid to speak, feel my face flush. I lower my eyes, blinking, embarrassed.
‘Shhh. You are a man now.’
My hands are cupped at the front of my trousers, trying to hide the effect her touch is having.
‘So handsome,’ she whispers close to my ear, the heat and scent of her neck making speech impossible.
Then she kisses me. Her lips on mine. Sweet and soft. Her mouth. Her whole mouth.
I am afraid and have to break away. ‘We must go back.’
‘Now?’
‘It’s late. We must remember …’ I rise quickly before I can forget who I am and lose myself in her mouth, melt into her forever.
Angry, she stomps before me.
As we near the road I reach for her. ‘I will marry you. I don’t know how, but I will.’
That night I write by the candle until the roosters begin to crow. I write a letter telling Babai everything I have planned for us. University, good jobs, money, a wedding bigger than any our village has ever seen, a wedding so large and a dowry so rich that my sub-caste will amount to nothing. I write of my love, as full and deep as Shiva’s for Shakti. My lingam, her yoni. Together. The children we’ll have. The life we’ll make, away from our past and the curse of being born broken. Together, we will be whole. On the last page I write, ‘I love you. I love you, I love you.’ More than one hundred times, ‘I love you.’
That was two weeks ago. She keeps the letter in the front of her blouse, near her heart. When I walk close behind her I swear I hear the pages rustle. But there will be no more secret kisses today. Her brothers are waiting at the school gates to take her home. As I pedal out, glancing in her direction, I hear them say that their father has lost his job.
In the dark after dinner I am in bed, my hands pretending they are Babai’s, when I hear her cries from down the street. I sit up in a panic, ready to run to her rescue. Her father is ranting. Her brothers are shouting. Her mother screams. And then all is quiet.
‘Don’t go to school today,’ says my mother at breakfast. ‘Don’t go. Wait. See what’s happened. Her father …’
But I have to go, to make sure Babai is alright. My mother makes me pray before Gandhi-ji, Ganesh and Ambedkar, and blesses me three times. She watches as I ride down the street, which is empty, quiet. I smile back at her, a smile that says, ‘See, nothing to worry about, just another family argument, nothing about me.’ I do not see the wire strung across the road. My bike careers out of my hands and I am in the dirt, winded, struggling to find my breath when Babai’s brothers are upon me. As my vision clears I see her father at the roadside. He barks orders. In his hand is a sheaf of crumpled paper, my letter, my letter to Babai. My hundred declarations of love. I struggle but the brothers hold me fast, ripping off my shirt. My mother runs to me, but one of them rises and kicks her down. Half the village is now watching. No one moves to help my mother.
‘Filthy Chamar!’ the father shouts, marching towards me. The sharp slap of his strap striking his hand sounds like gunshots. ‘With my daughter!’ His voice is high pitched with fury, his face like an angry god. The destroyer. The face of my death. The strap comes down and I twist myself to take the blows on my back and feel its cut. Skin comes away with the leather as he pulls back for another blow but I do not cry out. I clench tight my teeth and send my screams deep into my heart to make it hard. He will not see my tears. He will not take my pride. Again and again the strap comes down, until the pain blurs into one sharp terror. Streams of blood course over my ribs. The villagers call, ‘More … more … teach him his place.’
‘Get my razor!’ the old man bellows to his wife, who stands apart from her men. My mother cries for mercy, begs the gods to intervene. She pleads with Babia’s mother as a mother who has also given birth to sons of her own. But the woman turns her battered face away as she brings the glinting razor and the crowd is suddenly quiet.
The brothers pin me on my back in the muddy pool of dirt and cow dung and blood as their father lowers a knee onto my chest. The circle around us tightens. The old man is heavy; I struggle for breath and my nostrils burn with the stink of laundry soap and sweat. He holds the blade high. His fingers squeeze my cheek as he brings the razor down on my face and I taste the metal of my own blood, thick and salty. I hear my mother weeping.
I spit and cry out, ‘Babai!’ Is she already dead?
The razor scrapes across my skull, hacking off my hair until my face is covered with dark curls stuck together with blood from my lacerated scalp. ‘That’ll teach him,’ I hear the merchant’s son shout, ‘the filthy Chamar.’
‘This piece of dirt has shamed my family!’ the old man roars, his one eye sweeping wildly over the crowd. He fumbles with my belt. I hear a collective gasp and pray for death to come quickly.
‘Noooo!’ I hear. It is Babai, and I twist my head to see her fight through the circle of onlookers; her face is swollen and blue.
‘Get back to the house, slut!’ her father says, and I feel an easing of his weight as he twists to unleash a torrent of foulness upon her. Her brothers, too, have loosened their grip and I lift my knees, kick out at the old man and roll from between his legs. Scramble in the dirt through the crowd. A sharp kick to the groin stops one brother. My mother grasps at the ankles of the other who punches her face. ‘Run, my son, run!’
I almost stop out of fear for her, but I find my feet and race away, the two brothers giving chase, the father raging, the whole village in his wake, ‘Chamar! Chamar!’
I run.
I run to the end of the houses, through the yellowing fields and across the railway tracks. Run fast as I can, tears stinging my slashed cheek. Run far, all the way to the monks at Bodh Gaya if I must. But I will come back, for Babai.
I am not Chamar.
I am not broken.
I am a man.
My name is Gopal Kumar.
In memory of Manish Kumar, fifteen, thrown in front of a train in Bihar a year ago for writing a love letter.
