Free The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash Page A

Mohandas’s ‘Hu, tu, tu, I’m coming after you!’ grew closer with every second. She realised she wasn’t going to be able to get away, but nonetheless gave it one more go – and just as she was picking up speed, Mohandas managed to catch up with one great leap and grab hold of her; they plunged into the waters. ‘Lemmego! Lemmego!’ she said trying to fend him off, splashing him with water, but Mohandas just held on tighter. His breath and her breath commingled in the wet river air. He tickled her as before, this time yielding great laughter. She dropped her false resistance, and in the middle of pushing him away, her body slid up right to his, like iron to a magnet.
    He flipped her down onto the shallow riverbed and slid atop her. ‘My sweet little beauty!’ And he began to kiss her. They flopped and splashed, unbound in the cool waters of the Kathina, as if they were two young fish, maybe a gonch or padhit, frolicking under the hazy, flickering stars in that hot monsoon midnight. Occasionally a sweet scream of delight emerged fromdeep in Kasturi’s bosom, piercing the night’s stillness, and mixed with Mohandas’s heavily breathed ‘Hu, tu, tu tuuuuu!’
    An exhausted Kasturi emerged from the water and fell asleep in her soaking wet sari, Devdas at her side. As for Mohandas, he remained lying in the shallow waters of the Kathina river for who knows how many hours, eyes fixed on the gods in the sky, and singing:
    Birds are singing, chirp chirp!
    Chirp chirp but where is my sweet lover?
    My lover in this cherry blossom season?
    Wild cherry where have you gone?
    How to tell my cherry I am ready but not yet ripe?
    Mohandas had such a sweet singing voice that night that the lapwings and pankukris in the far-away distance heard his song and joined in.
    That night would later be remembered as the beginning of Sharda.
    It was a good year for muskmelon and watermelon and vegetables in general, but the price remained low at the market, and there wasn’t any real profit to be had. Again Kasturi was pregnant and had to take on more work, while Mohandas toiled like an animal. While that one time the Kathina had heeded his prayers, afterward its waters often crested high, its current gobbling up a month’s worth of Mohandas’s labor. Kaba’s cough began to worsen, but Mohandas met an excellent doctor, Dr Wakankar, who worked six miles away at the government hospital in the neighbouring village, and explained that TB drugs were available free in the hospital, and that his fathershould get the full course of medicine. The doctor gave him a plastic bag with a full two months’ worth of the drug. But Kaba wasn’t capable by himself of taking the medications on time, and he didn’t take his meals or eat according to any sort of normal schedule. Dr Wakankar also told Mohandas that his mother could have an operation done that would restore some of her eyesight, but it would run to at least ten thousand. He gave his word to Mohandas that if ever an honest district collector came to the area, he’d arrange the operation; but years passed without an honest district collector coming to the area. In the meantime, a young man and woman from an NGO started visiting their weaver-caste neighbourhood, and made all sorts of promises about some project that would greatly increase their quality of life. The two youths filled out a bunch of forms, and had Mohandas sign them. But then the visits stopped; later they found out that the two had got married and gone to Delhi. She was working for a TV channel and, thanks to an uncle of his, he’d been set up with a cushy IAS job in a slum development, and was now opening his own foundation, taking trips crisscrossing India and the globe.
    Time marched on with Mohandas and Kasturi somehow managing to survive by the grace of Malihamai and their own hard work. Sharda was two, Devdas four. Kaba now spent most of his time