Translated from the Marathi by Uma Shirodkar
‘Kaay ga? How come corn bhakri today?’
‘Ration wheat is over.’
He is annoyed at his wife’s answer. I am like a prisoner in jail. Saala, what a bare life this is. He glances over at her. The children are asleep, so she is peacefully eating her meal.
Does she even like corn bhakri? The coarse texture makes it tough to chew and swallow.
I need gulps of water to wash down every morsel. What if it punctures my insides? The absurdity of the thought makes him chuckle.
I’ve changed so much in the city, my tastebuds have grown indulgent, accustomed to wheat parathas fried in oil. This takes him back to the humble finger-millet bhakri of his childhood that he ate with field beans. He wonders how he ever managed to eat such simple fare. A deep nutty crimson, each coarse morsel turning sticky with saliva as he ate.
I’ve turned into a fancy white-collarman now, indulging my body more than necessary. He is filled with remorse. Immersed in these thoughts he finishes his meal.
‘Need to get the units increased on the ration card…the baby is three years old now…’ his wife reminds him. He can already visualise the winding serpentine queue in front of the ration office. It would take all of tomorrow—an absolute waste of the day!
‘Tomorrow is a holiday anyway. I’ll go stand in the line first thing in the morning’, he reassures her.
Chewing on some roasted aniseed, he starts preparing to go out.
‘Where are you off to this late?’
‘I’ll just step out for a while. You sleep.’
‘When are you going to bloody turn up now?’ his wife hisses angrily. She is exhausted from the burden of single-handedly running the house. I give her a fixed amount from my monthly salary and wash my hands off of the responsibility, I know she’s frustrated.
He promises to be back in an hour and sets out.
He crosses the road. There is darkness all around and the streetlights have been dimmed. As he dodges the potholes and cracks on the dug-up road and reaches the open park, he wonders when the construction work will end. It has been going on for a year now. He is surrounded by housing board apartments woven together like spider webs. Through them, a small path leads into the park.
As he walks down that path, he notices a flock of about fifty people gathered in one corner of the park. They were surely not there this evening when he was returning from work!
He is puzzled. How did these people suddenly sprout forth from the earth like blades of grass? Where could they have come from? Mumbai city was already a giant anthill teeming with humans. And to add to it, there had been a constant influx of the famine-stricken ...
Some children loiter there, watching him. He goes up to the group. Even in the dark, their pitiable condition is crystal clear to the eye. Faces furrowed with terrible worry; their clothes reduced to rags. Naked, unclothed children. A few young women. From their attire he places them all as Lamaanis. He doesn’t understand their chaotic chattering.
‘Aap kahaanse aaye?’ he curiously asks in Bambaiyya Hindi. Where you from? The unexpected question makes everyone go quiet. They all stare at him.
‘Very far. From Kutch …’ a young man politely answers, again in Hindi. He has a red cloth tied around his waist. Tall and well-built like a Pathan, he looks like he could effortlessly take down ten men. The helplessness writ large on his face does not suit him.
His memories are awakened at the mention of Kutch. Thrilling memories of the war, the journey to the border—all seem to float before his eyes like a dream. Skirmishes at the border had given rise to some political tensions. Teams of satyagrahis from Mumbai had gone there to intervene. He had gone because he was curious to see what a country’s border looked like.
The local populace enthusiastically welcomed them with song and dance to the rousing beats of the dholak. Enormous canopies were erected at every crossroad. Their meals were cooked in pure ghee. He has still not forgotten their hospitality. These famine-stricken men and women have come all the way from such a place. How to welcome them? He realises that he there is not much he can do, and this makes him restless and uneasy.
‘Everyone is hungry. Only water since morning ...’ the young man interrupts his reverie. Hopeful eyes gaze in his direction. It is night. What to offer them at this hour?
His heart screams. ‘Baba re, you’re otherwise not enough for yourself. You’re a pencil-pushing peon, the lowest of the low, on a monthly salary of three hundred. Plugging the holes in your own roof is a mammoth task for you. These aren’t just a couple of people. How are you going to provide all of them with one square meal? How do you expect to make even a measly dent in their monolith of sorrow? Your monthly fortune will run out in a day. What are you going to shove down your family’s throats then? And suppose if you feed them today, would that be a permanent solution? Forget about these lofty humanitarian ideas. Such ideologies are only good when it comes to pontificating. Have you not heard the hollow speeches politicians make?’
The thought of politicians makes him think of asking the local corporator for help. He is surprised at how he has still not thought of this idea. He promises to provide them with a meal.
Bhagwaan tera bhalaa kare— the elderly women look up at the sky in supplication. The Indian tendency of leaving everything up to an unnamed god and remaining unaffected by life’s vagaries annoys him.
He crosses the railway junction, reaches the corporator’s house and finds himself in the midst of a swarm of people. They are racked with worry about their ration cards. Someone needs a new member added to their list, someone else wants a new card. That a recommendation from the corporator gets things done quickly is common knowledge.
Once the crowd thins out, he goes and speaks to the corporator.
‘What can possibly I do at this time of the night?’ the man says, glancing up at him from the pile of papers.
‘Can you not arrange for one meal?’
‘There was a contribution made for this. Gujarat and Maharashtra had been allotted equal funds. Now the party doesn’t have anything left.’
‘Is there no way out?’ he firmly asks again.
The corporator thoughtfully scratches his head. Then he says with renewed energy:
‘Look, I will not be able to do anything this late at night. I still have to prepare for tomorrow’s meetings. Do one thing. There is a trade association here. I will give the chairman of the association a recommendation on your behalf. He will suggest a way out,’ he promptly begins scribbling a letter.
He takes the letter and comes to the chairman’s bungalow. Blue light has spilled over onto the road below from the open windows. The row of people sleeping on the illuminated footpath seems to him like the bodies in a morgue, frigid and lifeless.
He sighs heavily and tries to unlatch the gate.
‘Kaun hai?’ a hoarse voice cuts throughs the dark. There is a sound of a staff striking stone. A security guard dressed in khaki is trying to shoo him away.
‘Want to meet Champa-sheth!’
‘Which one? There are three Champa-sheths here.’
‘He owns a factory. Also has a ration shop!’
The guard peers at him apprehensively. ‘Come in the morning, Sheth is sleeping! He can’t meet at night,’ he says, and swats him away like a mosquito.
He makes several futile attempts at communicating the purpose of his visit. But the guard doesn’t budge. The noise of their talking rouses those sleeping on the footpath. Who’s this madman waking up Champa-sheth at this time of the night, they stare at him. No one flinches upon hearing the plight of the famine stricken. They all remain unfazed. It troubles him that not even the common man has any sympathy left. This is like striking one’s head against stone, he thinks, and resignedly moves away.
Now he has lost all hope. The thought of going home and straight to bed looks inviting.
But what about my promise? How are they going to sleep on an empty stomach?
As he walks with his mind wavering, he spots Kamble. It is like finding a ray of light in the darkness.
Kamble gives him a friendly slap on the back. ‘Kaay re, where are you roaming like a ghost this late at night?’
‘Good you met me. How much money in your pocket?’
‘Baba re, why are you eyeing my pockets?’
He tells Kamble everything.
‘Hattichya! That’s all? How much does one need for a single meal? Let’s feed all of them usal-paav.’
‘Good idea. But will the hotels be open at this time?’
‘Hotel Prakash near the train station will be open. We’ll surely get sambar there. Let’s buy the paav from the bread-wallah outside.’
They reach the hotel. True to its name, ‘Prakash’ is like a shining gemstone set in a ring, glowing against the darkness around.
‘Can we buy sambar separately at such a posh place?’
‘Not like we’re asking for free.’
They climb the steps of the hotel. In the dim light some sit sipping beer, some are having dinner. The potbellied Nityananda Swami serenely smiles down at them from his portrait hung on the wall above. Further away, a few boys are mopping the floor. It is closing time.
The owner sits on a cushioned chair counting out notes. Kamble mumbles in his ear.
‘We don’t want anything for free.’ Kamble firmly says.
As soon as the question of money arises, the owner packs off a waiter into the kitchen. Until then he talks unabated. ‘Aaho, where’s the famine? How much food can you possibly need? First pay up.’ They are astounded at these words. It was like Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burnt.
The waiter returns. ‘Sambar is there’, he confirms. ‘But how are you going to carry so much of it?’
‘Give us your own container. We live nearby. We’ll return it in the morning.’
‘Will this do?’ the owner gets up from the counter and points to a grimy bucket kept nearby.
‘But they’re humans too. So what if they’re destitute?’ he says, finally not being able to bear the owner’s callousness anymore.
The sambar is poured into a small empty Dalda container. The bill is five rupees for the sambar and one rupee for the container. They are astounded looking at the total amount. Given a chance, these people would even scrape the sacred ghee off a corpse, they rue. They are both briefly tempted to strike the owner’s expansive belly in rage. But they soon realise that they cannot behave as wantonly and brazenly as Naxalites do, and regret the ghastly thought. Without another word they meekly accept the sambar and come out onto the road.
In search of the bread, they wander into a deserted back alley. Some people are fast asleep there on string cots. Still, they somehow manage to find a bread-wallah who takes them by utter surprise.
‘Look bhai, I don’t want money. They’re famine victims! Just take it!’ he says in Hindi. From his attire he appears like a Musalman. This is new. An ordinary bread-wallah has given them a huge shock. Reassured that there is still some warmth of humanity left somewhere in the world, they turn towards the park with the bread.
The park is deserted. The famine-stricken group is nowhere in sight. Where did these people suddenly disappear? Now what to do with the sambar and the bread that they’ve so laboriously brought along? They walk ahead.
The crowd is right there, asleep on the ground.
They call out and rouse everyone. There is a renewed commotion. Hungry hands advance for sambar and bread. Satisfaction spreads across their faces.
The duo is ashamed to see the group’s pitiful attempt at filling their stomachs.
He takes Kamble’s leave and returns home with a heavy heart.
*
‘Aaho, get up. How long will you sleep?’ his wife wakes him up. He rises, rubbing his sleepy eyes. He doesn’t recollect when he returned home last night and fell asleep. He stretches contentedly with the satisfaction of having done a good deed last night.
‘Aaho, see what happened at the park! The police have come!’ she fills him in. Stricken with doubt he runs out, still in his nightclothes. A crowd surrounds the famine-stricken group.
‘What happened?’ he asks a bystander.
‘There’s been a burglary in the neighbouring block. Someone has sawn open the bars of the back window and jewellery and cash is missing.’
He shoots through the crowd like an arrow. The police are manhandling the young man from yesterday, the one with a red cloth tied around his waist. The police allege that he is the culprit.
‘We are not thieves!’ they shout. The police are in no mood to listen to anyone or anything. They grab the young men by the scruffs of their necks and drag them towards the police jeep. Their wives wail, ‘Kutch … Kutch!’
These people are not thieves! he feels like saying. But he cannot.
Disillusioned, he begins walking back home.
Daya Pawar [Dagdu Maruti Pawar] (1935-1996) was a Marathi writer, poet and activist in the Dalit movement. His autobiographical Baluta (1978)—one of the first Dalit autobiographies to be published—caused a stir in literary circles for its no-holds-barred depiction of the cruelty of the caste system both in rural Maharashtra and life in 1950s Bombay. Multiple editions of Baluta have been published so far and it has been translated into several languages. He is credited with a collection of travel writing and newspaper columns. He also wrote and published the poetry collections Kondwada (1974) and Pani Kuthvar Aala Ga Baai (1998). Pawar, who died in 1996, wrote about his experience of caste injustice with surprising candour without sugarcoating his reality or lived experiences. This can also be seen in 'Bhook' (Hunger).
From the 1983 short story collection Vitaal (Desecration), this short story paints a picture of the micro-aggressions and inequalities faced by oppressed castes and migrants in so-called progressive urban spaces through the lens of the most primal human urge— hunger. The story is set in 1970s Bombay, ironically a hotbed of progressivism at the time in the wake of the Sathottari (post-60's) movement.
Uma Shirodkar is a writer, translator, and Associate Translations Editor (Fiction) at The Bombay Literary Magazine. Born and brought up in Mumbai, she translates primarily from Marathi into English. Her translations have appeared in Hakara Journal and Guernica Magazine. She was a 2022 South Asia Speaks Translation Fellow; and in 2024 graduated with a PGDip. in Translation and Creative Writing from Ahmedabad University. Her translation of Bhau Padhye’s story 'The Wife Eaters' earned a Jury Special Mention for the 2024 Mozhi Translation Prize.