Free The Faith of Ashish by Kay Marshall Strom Page A

who has never had to work in the sun or wind.
    "Babu!" Mammen Samuel called to his Sudra servant. "Bring us tea. Quickly, now!"
    Brahmin Keshavan pulled his own cup out from the pure white folds of his mundu. He need not say a word, for this gesture alone proclaimed: You and yours are not pure enough for such a one as I .
    Mammen Samuel understood the insult. He smiled and nodded, but inside he seethed.
    "May the gods smile on your harvest," Brahmin Keshavan said.
    Mammen Samuel waited until Babu laid out the tea, then he answered, "The fields are rich and full, praise be to the one true God in heaven."
    "You have a great crowd of workers," said the Brahmin. "They number in the many hundreds, do they not?"
    Mammen Samuel shrugged. "Only enough to bring in the harvest and plant the rice paddies, and no more. The exact number, I do not know. I don't worry myself about such trivialities."
    Both men knew that wasn't true. Mammen Samuel had every name of every bonded laborer carefully recorded in his leather-bound book, and each one was numbered—every man, every woman, and every child. He knew perfectly well that he had exactly five hundred forty-one slaves, and what was more, Brahmin Keshavan knew that Mammen Samuel knew it.
    "My house is the first house in the Brahmin section of the village," Brahmin Keshavan stated.
    Of course, Mammen Samuel knew exactly where the great Brahmin lived. Not that he had ever been invited inside his house. The few times in this life he'd had occasion to search out the Brahmin, he had been kept waiting outside for Keshavan to come out to him. But certainly Mammen Samuel knew where he lived.
    "In my childhood days in this village, the Brahmin section had never been trodden by the polluted feet of a pariah," Keshavan continued. "Not a single Brahmin defiled his hands with labor of any sort. Untouchables did all the dirty work— but they did it far away from our street. Anything necessary to our comfort or welfare, Sudras carried in and out."
    Mammen Samuel sipped his tea. He was not at all pleased with the direction of the conversation.
    "Today, everything is different. Today our entire village is polluted. Potters and carpenters and scavengers and Sudras— all of them live together, and directly outside our village gates too. All of them work together in your fields. Unclean meateaters live just across the field from the Brahmin section of the village."
    Mammen Samuel's jaw clenched.
    "Why, not so many days ago a chamar walked the full length of our road on his way to your house. It happened to be the very same chamar whose son dared to defile our water. And now you have both that chamar and his son living right here, on your land. It is not right!"
    Mammen Samuel lifted his tea cup to his lips and slurped with a vengeance.
     

     
    "Stay inside the hut on your sleeping mat," Latha had told Ashish as she left for the fields. "Lie down and sleep all day. Sleep and get well."
    But Ashish felt well already. He could take a deep breath and feel only a little pain. Most of all, he wished he could pull the tight bandages off his body. Ashish sat up stiffly and took out the red wooden top the pale English lady had slipped him when he left the clinic, and he tried to spin it the way she taught him. But it wouldn't spin on the dirt floor.
    That's when he noticed the girl peeking through the doorway.
    "Who are you?" Ashish demanded.
    "Little Girl. I brought you milk to drink."
    Little Girl came in and set a clay cup down beside him.
    "My amma left me chapatis to eat," Ashish said. "Do you want one?"
    "I have to look out for my little sister, Baby," Little Girl said. "She always finds trouble."
    "Look what I have," Ashish bragged as he held out the red top. "If you come back to play with me, I'll show you how it works."
     

     
    "I am not a man without power," Brahmin Keshavan stated. "Spiritual power, most certainly. That is obvious. But my family also has impressive political alliances upon which I can