A Burning(50)

His voice booms from the megaphones. Ducks in a weedy pond nearby flee to the far side.

“Think of this not just as education for your children, but jobs for your family! We will need construction workers, cooks—”

    PT Sir feels himself to be a kind of Bimala Pal. He is pleasantly surprised by his confident voice, the feeling of uplift as he stands before a crowd that has grown to a hundred or more. They are mostly men. It is true that many of them are here for the free bags of wheat flour. Still, they are here. PT Sir sees them craning to get a better view of him. He sees them listening to his words. Is this how powerful people feel?

Then a man in the crowd shouts, “Will there be Muslims teaching their religion at this school? Then we will not send our children!”

PT Sir clears his throat. “Well,” he begins. “I respect your religion. I respect your sentiment. Public schools are for all, but we will keep in mind your community—”

In the back, where the crowd consists of curious stragglers, some men laugh. A joke drifts through the margins that PT Sir cannot catch.

PT Sir calls, “The important thing is your religion will be respected, your morals will be taught, at this school. I assure you! Vote for Jana Kalyan Party in the upcoming elections!”

PT Sir thumbs off the microphone and hands it to a boy who begins bundling up the cables. The men holding the megaphones throw the metal mouths to a partner waiting below, then leap to the ground, their feet sending up clouds of dust. They clap their palms free of splinters.

It is then that a young man in the middle of the crowd shouts, “A holy mother cow was killed. Yes,” he continues, as there is a stunned silence, “killed in our own village!”

    People wandering away stop and turn toward him. A small circle opens up around this man, who continues, “What will we do? Will we stand here and listen to a speech about a school? Are we not men?”

PT Sir raises his arms. “Be calm, brother,” he calls. “Better that you don’t spread rumors.”

But the crowd begins to agitate. Men shout, “Who was it? Who was it?”

“Who killed the cow?”

“Whose cow?”

From where he stands, PT Sir shouts, “Please be calm, your village chief will investigate—”

Nobody is listening to him. PT Sir hears names floating, names of the only ones who eat beef.

PT Sir shouts again, “Rain is coming, please be calm and—”

But the crowd bellows and lumbers, like a many-limbed animal discovering its ferocity. As one they direct their feet to the area where the Muslim villagers live.

PT Sir follows the crowd. Only a few minutes ago he was in full control of these men, inspiring them with words about school. Now they speed down narrow and narrower lanes, passing by children who look up from bathing, their eyes peering out from soaped faces. Mothers and fathers appear and snatch up the children, drawing them inside despite their cries.

    “Stop,” PT Sir cries. “Listen here! The party will not be happy with you all. Don’t you want the school—”

Unbelieving, his heart beating too fast, beside him the impassive face of the driver who drove him here, PT Sir watches the crowd find the house. He watches them rattle the chain on the doors, then break the flimsy panels open.





INTERLUDE


THE VILLAGERS VISIT THE BEEF-EATER


KILL HIM BECAUSE HE ate beef, that Muslim.

Come prepared with daggers and homemade pistols, and we will go as a force of the good god to that man’s house. His door surprises us—two rotting planks of wood held together by a chain which, when we grip it, leaves our fingers smelling of iron.

But no, it is not that which surprises us, but the fact that we remember gripping this chain to rattle, innocent. “Brother, borrow your ladder?” we asked him before.

You see, he is our neighbor. A decent man, sure. His beard descends as a cloud to his chest, and our sons fear him for how he tests their mathematics whenever he sees them. “Eight times five?” he says to them. “Square root of forty-nine?”

They say he used to be a schoolteacher, but of what use is that? We all used to be something else.

Now, behind the door we know well, the stillness of the house strikes us as false. It makes us angry. The heat of the day, our empty stomachs—we are not happy. How could we be happy when our sacred mother cow is being senselessly slaughtered? Do not forget! The cow who has given us milk (oh yes), and has drawn the plow through our great-grandparents’ fields (yes), and has borne our goddess to her heavenly home (oh yes), that very cow has been killed like a common pest by this Muslim. What can we do? What must we do?

    In the room behind the door, three daughters, too young to be of any use. We cut them like their father cut our holy mother cow. Our people, the true people of this nation, are a flood of cleansing water, our arms and legs full of muscles which grab and swing, our grip never more certain than when it closes around the resistant throat of the man’s wife. Never more certain than when it stretches open her legs.

—Too ugly! we think at first.

—Aha, not too ugly after all, we know later.

We shatter the fading photographs on the wall, we shake the cupboard until a few gold bangles fall out, and we fall upon the gold like it is a drop of water in a desert.