NO PRAYER FOR THE RAIN
The night was dark and the wind howled in the nearby hills. All around hung a dreadful silence. It had grown late when Palden awoke in his ragged hut perched upon a ridge. The downpour that had pelted the hillside for an unending week had somehow lessened. Only the rattle of a faint drizzle upon newly sprouted leaves persisted. The monsoon was harsh on these hillsides. It had brought about a certain stinging chill and Palden could feel the cold nip his skin. He wrapped his blanket around his shivering body like a shroud. Inside, he could hear his mother muttering something. She was cursing as usual. His little sister was fast asleep perhaps, unbothered by those filthy abuses. “That fool,” she was grumbling. “That fool, woe to me that I took him for a husband as though there wasn’t anybody else man enough. That rascal,” her words turned filthier.
“Of all the people I had him to meet. My cursed forehead, so this is where all my unlucky fate is scratched.” Palden suddenly turned curious, a bit frightened, he could hear her hitting hard at something. Slap, slap, slap…. the sound emerged from within the room where his mother and little sister slept. He strained his ear and put it closer to the dung plastered matted wall. Rap, tap, tap… “This ugly fate, here you go.” He tried to peer through the slits upon the wall but the pitchy darkness had shrouded the entire hut.
“How am I to get rid of all this mess,” she was slapping upon her forehead. Queer, but his mother had always been this way. He often wondered what her unhappiness was all about.
And father, where was he at this unearthly hour. He should have been home a long time back. The entire ridge had slept, or so it appeared. He could hear the chilling sweep of the wind as it slapped against the ridge and the nearby pine forest.
A sudden worry overtook him. “My father’s maize field,” he thought. “Lord, spare it. He will be shattered if the thriving plants are beaten upon the earth like last year.” He craved to have a look outside. But the wind was turning harsher upon the ridge. Meanwhile the sound from within had ceased. His mother had perhaps slept. But then where was father, he kept thinking anxiously. He had never been so late. Some urgent work on the site might have cropped up. As the monsoon had begun, the roads would have been the worst hit with traffic being stalled for hours. Last year, an entire hill had slithered down taking Gopal’s father along with a torrent of wet earth and boulders. Such accidents were known to occur each time the monsoon arrived. And Palden thought his father to be a valiant man to risk his life this way.
“We are working at a bridge. It was twisted a day ago by a huge boulder that fell from the top of a cliff,” his father had informed. “Numerous vehicles are held up. Poor people some had to sleep in their vans with no food.”
“Father what will happen to them if the bridge is not done?” he had innocently asked.
“That’s what we are for son,” he had smiled. And Palden had felt proud to have him for a father. He wondered why mother never understood him. For him he was the most striking man around. Pity, mother never really knew him.
As the night grew darker he grew worried. Perhaps he got held up too, he consoled himself. Otherwise nothing could have stopped him. The other day his father was talking about the sliding zone just above the Teesta, which always crashed down during the rains and buried the already jagged road. “All the lorries transporting supplies to Sikkim
Well, maybe those people were like them for they too often had nothing to eat especially when his father didn’t have any work on a road site.
“Rains are good for us son. Pray for the rains,” his father had once said. And he had really prayed. But then, that very night a sudden rain and wind together had pelted down their full grown maize plants. The tassels had begun to appear and in a few weeks time the comb would have appeared. Well, that was a bad year and there wasn’t enough work on the road sites too. Father had tried to raise those plants, but then, mother had begun to shout.
“Of what use is it? Now that you’ve seen what has happened, go and look for some work. Or do you want us to starve?” And then she had walked off to a neighbour’s hut nearby.
He sensed that his father was embarrassed and sad too, but then, he didn’t speak out a single harsh word. After some time he himself had set off and returned late at night with a day’s wage.
“Where had you been today father?” he had asked. “There’s no work now. The groups on the sites have all proceeded further down to the plains. I could have gone too but then there’ll be nobody here.” “I fished in the Teesta. I was lucky to catch a few trouts though it’s not yet time for a good catch. Once the monsoon sets in there’ll be schools of them swimming around. But then I’ll have no time then because of work on sites.”
“And what did you do to those trouts?” Palden felt curious. “Oh, I sold them off. We’ll need money to buy some ration tomorrow in the weekly mart.”
“Father, will you teach me how to fish’?
“Why not. But you must study well first, then I’ll show you how to fish in the Teesta. It’s a risky river you see.”
“And to swim too, father.”
“Yes, and swim too.”
Palden had felt immensely pleased. Someday he would learn to swim and fish in the Teesta. “Oh, what a nice time they both would have. Perhaps he would take his little sister along too. But then, on second thoughts, no, his mother might curse his father. Well, let her remain at home,” he had thought.
The wind had gradually begun to fade. He was scared that if it turned harder it would blow off their roof like it had done some years back and father had to spend an entire day fixing a new one.
But then, it had really grown late and his father still wasn’t back home.
Suddenly he felt a deep urge to have a look outside. So he scrambled out of his warm bed in the kitchen and stumbled outside. Very slowly he felt for the wet ground and staggered about. It was dark and cold. He could see nothing. He tried looking hard at the maize plants but then it was only the faint rattle of the drizzle that strummed his ears. The cold had grown and the slow drizzle could grow into rain again any moment. So he carefully found his way back into his bed in the kitchen.
Not a sound emerged from within.
Late at night he had awoken to a certain commotion inside the hut. He felt as though a shrug had shaken him out off slumber. As his blurry eyes probed around he grew conscious of a sombre gathering that had formed a crowd inside.
“Sleep,” somebody said. It was Rakesh’s mother who lived a few fields away. “Don’t wake up,” she calmly insisted on him.
“Why, what happened”?
“Nothing.”
At an instant he could hear a deep wail. It was his mother. Something had happened. His thoughts suddenly flew to his father. A certain fear ate into him.
“Aunty, what happened”?
“Your father….,” she hesitated. “He is no longer among us.”
His eyes by now had turned moist. No words fell off his lips. He kept staring at the crowd while aunty hugged him closely. Some strangers stood outside while someone was explaining something to uncle. While his mother wailed inside clutching his little sister.
Somehow he grew angry. Why this pretence, he thought. When all these days she hadn’t a single good word for him, now that he was dead…… He preferred to cast these thoughts aside.
The night had ended. Days passed. His mother lay lost in herself while his little sister remained engaged in her play most of the time. His father was crushed to death by a sudden landslide. A week’s rain had loosened the earth and down it had crashed like the same torrent of sludgy earth and boulders that had swept away Gopal’s father. His father had died in his efforts to clear out the way for those trucks carrying supplies to people who he thought would starve.
Meanwhile the contractor had offered him a job on the site. Though he was still small he could do a thing or two, he had assured.
“Take him away,” his mother had spoken. “Else he’ll waste himself in the maize field like his father.”
A few days later he found himself cleaning the wheels of the road roller. At times, hauling out trolley full of slush and gravel. Some few spare moments on the site found him thinking of his father, the fishing and swimming lessons that were never done, the maize field and his little sister. But somewhere deep down, a strange stirring, born out of that ghastly episode perhaps, somehow kept assuring that he wouldn’t be praying for the rain again.
And his mother….
Somehow he didn’t think of her.
