Mamta Kalia

Send him to school tomorrow.’
The next day I went to school with
fear stalking my heart. I sat in the class
in trepidation. Every second I worried
that the headmaster was coming... Now
he comes... At the slightest sound my
heart pounded. After a few days, things
calmed down. But my heart trembled
the moment I saw headmaster Kaliram.
It seemed as though it wasn’t a teacher
who was coming towards me but a
snorting wild boar with his snout up
in the air.
At harvest time, all the people in
our neighbourhood used to go to the
field of the Tagas to reap the crop. Cutting
the sheaves of wheat in the midday sun
is a very hard and painful task. The
sun pouring on your head. Fiery hot
ground underneath. The roots of the
cropped wheat plants pricked your feet
like spikes. The roots of mustard and
gram lentils hurt even more. The
harvesting of these lentils presented an
extra difficulty. The leaves are sour and
stick all over the body during harvesting.
Even bathing does not get rid of them
completely Most of the reapers were
from the untouchable castes of the
Chuhras or Chamars. They had clothes
on their bodies in name only. There
was no question of shoes on their feet.
Their bare feet got badly injured by
the time the crop was brought in.
The harvesting would often lead to
arguments in the fields. Most of the Tagas
were miserly when it came to paying
wages. The reapers were helpless.
Whatever they got, they took after
protesting a bit. They kept fretting after
12 :: April-June 2010
coming back home, cursing the Tagas.
But their protests died when confronted
with hunger. Every year there would
be a meeting in the neighbourhood at
harvest time. People swore to demand
one sheaf out of sixteen as wages. But
all the resolutions passed at the meetings
evaporated in thin air the moment
harvesting began. They got one sheaf
for cutting twenty-one as wages. One
sheaf had less than a kilo of grain. Even
the heaviest sheaf did not yield a kilo
of wheat. That is, a day’s wage wasn’t
worth even a kilo of wheat. After the
harvesting, the grain had to be loaded
on bullock or buffalo carts and unloaded.
Neither money nor grain was given for
that work. Sooner or later all of us had
to drive the bullocks on the threshing
floor, again without payment. In those
days there were no threshers for cleaning
up the wheat. The bullocks would be
taken round and round to break down
the sheaves into straw. Then the grain
would be separated from the chaff by
blowing it in a winnow. It was very
long and tiring work, performed mostly
by Chamars or Chuhras.
Along with these field labours, my
mother also cleaned the baithaks and
the ghers of eight or ten Tagas, both
Hindus and Muslims. My sister, elder
bhabhi–sister–in-law-and my two
brothers, Jasbir and Janesar, helped my
mother in this work. The older brother,
Sukhbir, worked for the Tagas like a
permanent servant.
Every Taga would have ten to fifteen
animals in his cowshed. Their dung had
to be picked up and brought to the