A Burning(10)

PT Sir might have thought that this man, along with hundreds of others, had been trucked here from a village, his empty belly lured by a free box of rice and chicken, his fervor purchased for one afternoon. He might have thought that, for these unemployed men, this rally is more or less a day’s job. The party is feeding them when the market is not.

But the man’s cries make the hairs on PT Sir’s arm stand up, and what is false about that?

The man on the car lifts his shirt and reveals, tucked in the waistband of his trousers, wrapped in a length of cloth, a dagger. He holds the handle and lifts it high in the air, where the blade catches the sun. Below him, surrounding the car, a man dances, then another, and another, a graceless dance of feeling.

The dagger stays up in the air, itself a sun above the field, and PT Sir looks at it, frozen in alarm and excitement. How spirited this man is, with his climb atop a jeep like a movie hero, with his dagger and his dancing. How different from all the schoolteachers PT Sir knows. How free.



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WHEN THE MEN BEGIN to tire, a coordinator announces, “Brothers and sisters! There are buses! To take you home! Please do not rush! Do not stampede! Everyone will be taken home free of charge!”

PT Sir returns to the train station. He has missed the delayed train, and when the next one comes, he finds an aisle seat, tucking his behind, the fifth, into a seat meant for three. The soles of his feet itch, reminding him they have been bearing his weight for much of the day. Somebody shoves past, dragging a sack over his toes. The person is gone before PT Sir can say anything. A woman then stands beside him, her belly protruding at his ear, and her purse threatening to strike him in the face at any moment. In this crowd, a muri walla, a puffed rice seller, makes his way. “Muri, muri!” he calls. The coach groans.

“Today out of all days!” comes the woman’s loud voice above his head. “First the delay, now there is no place to stand, and you have to sell muri here?”

“Harassment, that’s what this is,” says a voice from somewhere behind PT Sir. “This commute is nothing less than daily harassment!”

“Here, here, muri walla,” somebody objects. “Give me two.”

“And one here!” someone else calls.

The muri walla mixes mustard oil, chopped tomato and cucumber, spiced lentil sticks, and puffed rice in a tin. He shakes a jar of spices upside down. Then he pours the muri into a bowl made of newsprint.

    PT Sir’s stomach growls. He lifts his buttocks to try to reach his wallet.

“And one muri this way!” he says. “How much?”

The muri walla makes him a big bowl, heaping at the top.

“Don’t worry,” he says, handing the bowl to PT Sir. “For you, no charge.”

“No charge?” says PT Sir. He laughs, holding the bowl, unsure whether it is truly his to eat. Then he remembers: the red mark on his forehead, the party flag in his lap. PT Sir feels the other passengers staring at him. They must be thinking, who is this VIP?



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AT HOME, AFTER DINNER, PT Sir sits back in his chair, gravy-wet fingers resting atop his plate, and tells his wife, “Strange thing happened today. Are you listening?”

His wife is thin and short, her hair plaited such that it needs no rubber band at its taper. When she looks at him from her chair, it appears she has forgiven him for the forgotten tomatoes.

Something has happened at the school, she thinks. A man teaching physical training to a group of girls, all of whom are growing breasts, their bellies cramping during menstruation, their skirts stained now and then. A bad situation is bound to arise.

“What happened?” she says fearfully.

    “There was a Jana Kalyan rally in the field behind the station,” he begins, “then one man climbed on a car—understand? Climbed on top of a car—and took out….Tell me what he took out!”

“How will I know?” she says. When she bites into a milk sweet, white crumbs fall on her plate. “Gun, or what?”

“Dagger!” he says, disappointed. The truth is always modest. He goes on, “But Katie Banerjee was there—”

“Katie Banerjee!”

“Then Bimala Pal also was there. Say what you like about her, she is a good orator. And she was saying some correct things, you know. Her speech was good.”

His wife’s face sours. She pushes back her chair and its legs scrape the floor. “Speech sheech,” she says. “She is pandering to all these unemployed men. This is why our country is not going anywhere.”

“They are feeding a lot of people with discounted rice,” he says. “And they are going to connect two hundred villages, two hundred, to the electricity grid in two years—”

“You,” says his wife, “believe everything.”

PT Sir smiles at her. When she disappears into the kitchen, he gets up and washes his hands clean of turmeric sauce, then wipes them on a towel that was once white.

He understands how his wife feels. If you only watch the news on TV, it is easy to be skeptical. But what is so wrong about the common people caring about their jobs, their wages, their land? And what, after all, is so wrong about him doing something different from his schoolteacher’s job? Today he did something patriotic, meaningful, bigger than the disciplining of cavalier schoolgirls—and it was, he knows as he lies in bed, no sleep in his humming mind, exciting.