Rangi

RANGI

If our window had not faced their kitchen window so directly, I would, perhaps, never have known so much about Rangi and that fiendish woman next door. Besides, mine is an old heart, nourished in the rustic warmth of the village where walls are no barrier and secrets never guarded. Though it has been years since we, my husband and I, have come to live with our son in the city, tell me, how could I have shut my ears and eyes when I heard that child shriek with pain, hardly a few feet away? Had I not known the gentle throb of a child’s heart? And yet my son always said, ‘Don’t look into their kitchen, mother, it’s not our business. Whose business was it going to be then? Don’t you remember, my son, how it used to be when you were a little boy in the village: in our dear village with its mud walled house floored with cow dung? When you were a child, my son, every boy in the village was a son of the village, childbirth in another’s home was like childbirth in our own. I have nursed so many children and so many others have nursed mine. And my son, don’t you remember how the granny of the big house called out to you and your friends in the hot afternoons to give each one a tumbler of freshly churned buttermilk? And don’t you remember how she dropped a lump of butter into your tumbler on the sly because you were her favorite? And yet here I am being told not to see and not to hear happenings, so ghastly and cruel. What concrete rules of the city are these? I cannot understand it. Each one’s life is one’s own--unfeeling and selfish. I cannot take my mind off Rangi, torn away from her mother so early, sold to work for our neighbors. Imagine, a nine-year-old, a servant to an unfeeling woman, her husband, 29 her twelve-year-old son and their dog. You can tell from Rangi’s face that even the dog is better fed than she is and yet, for belly’s sake, she was sold to these people--for a paltry sum of Rs.500.00 a month--all the way from Biligiri  Ranga Hills. My son said it was over 300  kms from our city. Rama, Rama, what had the world come to? We also had poor children to help us in the village but we looked after them as our own children and the girl we had was suitably married at our expense. Rangi, poor girl, stopped at our door sometimes and I gave her something to eat but that lady, my neighbor Seshappa’s wife, must have espied her at our door and must have threatened her for she suddenly gave up her acquaintance with me and refused even to smile at me when she passed by our house. ‘Don’t interfere,’ my husband said, attributing my feelings to the inquisitiveness of an idle prying mind. ‘You can never say how these city folk could tarnish our son’s name.’ And yet – every day, when I combed my hair and put my bindi in the reflection of the mirror that faced the neighbor’s window, my eyes wandered to their house. When I heard Rangi cry, I hurried to the window, bearing the gentle admonition of my husband. One night, I was dozing off to sleep. We are early sleepers, my husband and I, and we had switched off the light in our room. Suddenly, I was awakened by the wailing and shouting next door. ‘Amma . . . don’t . . . Amma . . . I will not do it again.’ ‘You beast, you wretch, to have spilt all the milk . . .’ Sheshanna’s wife was storming at Rangi. ‘What is it, mother?’ This last voice belonged to her son who had walked in to see what the matter was. ‘This beast, look at her, she has dropped the milk vessel . . . the devil.’ Ghastly beatings followed. Since the light in our room was switched off and their kitchen was lit, the whole episode presented itself with the clarity of a movie before my eyes. My heart tore across the strong walls to little Rangi. I saw that lady lean forward to heat the iron spatula over the gas flame; she lunged forwards and I watched, hardly able to move, as she sunk it deep on Rangi’s palms and calf muscles. I felt numb; how could she be so brutal? ‘This is what you deserve, you devil,’ she cried as she and her son violently held the little girl’s body . . . and God . . . how my heart writhed in pain to 30 see it, the woman pierced her palms and thighs again and again with the hot iron. Rangi’s voice went dry with the screaming. The son watched; he appeared to be enjoying it, was almost gleeful. Suddenly he ran out and brought something--a new instrument of torture. ‘What is it, Balloon?’ his mother asked. ‘A needle’, he replied with merciless cunning. ‘Watch how I’ll poke her body . . .’ And he poked the helpless girl with the needle, enjoying her cries of pain. My husband had woken up and was standing beside me. Casting away all his professed rules of social propriety, he watched this hideous drama with me. ‘Can this be, Savithri ?’, he said, in a tear-filled voice. The woman dragged Rangi out of the kitchen. We heard the slamming of a door and her shouting, ‘Stay there . . . and starve till you’re dead.’ My husband and I did not sleep that night. Reminiscences of our old village world and the torment we had witnessed washed out our sleep. In our village home, we may have had only ragi and ganji to live on, but no one was left unfed in the household. Torturing an innocent child with hunger was a sin, it was unthinkable. Just what was it that made us strangers in the modern world? Was there a new code and an old code for humanity? Till noon there was no sign of Rangi. After our lunch, we settled down to crushing betel nut and leaves. In our village home, crushing and sharing of betel was a sacramental matrimonial observance. Throughout our married years, we had enjoyed this tradition and that afternoon, the sharing gave particular comfort to our troubled minds. The afternoon warmth lulled my husband to sleep and I must have dozed off too for it was with a start that I woke up to the noise on the street. The premonition that it was something to do with Rangi made me rush to the doorstep. A crowd had gathered around the public tap. The heat made me dizzy as I hurried with faltering steps towards the crowd. Someone said, ‘It’s the servant girl from your neighbor’s house . . . ’ Rangi lay at the tap unconscious. Her legs and palms were burnt. The raw flesh burst out from beneath. Her face had shrunk with pain and hunger and 31 shock. Though her eyes were shut, it looked like her whole being was crying with pain. She must have stopped at the tap in a desperate attempt to satisfy her thirst and perhaps her hunger also. ‘Why don’t we move her to a dry place…?’ I said. No one answered. The look on the faces in the crowd showed that they were in no mood to help. They said it was a ‘Police Case’ and warned me of danger even if I merely touched her. My emotions welled up in a trice. In anger and in tears, I blurted out the facts of Rangi’s condition. They sympathized but they were not willing to help her. Such indifference, even in the face, of, perhaps, death? ‘How are we responsible?’ they asked. ‘It is for the law to handle the matter.’ I felt alone and helpless, unable even to lift up the fallen child. But, whether in the city or the village, divine succor infiltrates everywhere. Divine succor. Yes, it was indeed that for how else can I explain the sudden appearance of Ganesh, an auto driver and his willingness to help Rangi? He took Rangi to the government hospital. He even promised to bring me news of her. That night, when Ganesh came back, my husband, my son and he spoke in hushed voices for quite some time. Since I had been told that Rangi was out of danger, I preferred to be alone in my room, exhausted as I already was. Events passed quickly after that day. Inhibitions of a lifetime were thrown aside in my concern for Rangi, and I agreed to appear before the police to relate Rangi’s story. In inscrutable detail, I spoke about the happenings of that horrid night. I related, also, past instances of cruelty as I had known but the police dismissed my story as imagination. They flung aspersions on me as an ignorant woman, incapable of judgment. They avowed that I must have made this complaint to the police to wreak vengeance on a neighbor with whom, perhaps, I had had a quarrel? When my son protested against these accusations, they asked him if he was witness to anything at all? If not, he had no say in the matter whatsoever. They declared that according to police reports, Rangi had never been unkindly treated, that the burns and injuries were due to her accidental fall over a hot pressure cooker and that she was indeed no servant at all but a poor relative whom Sheshappa and his wife looked after ‘out of pity’. The police seemed to be in a hurry to declare Sheshappa and his wife 32 innocent. My son was convinced that Sheshappa’s wife could still be arrested if Rangi’s own father would contradict the police reports. He promised financial support to fight the case in court. He contacted Rangi’s father and elaborated the incident to him. On my part, however, I was concerned only about Rangi and her return to her father. A few days later, Rangi’s father arrived. He was a personification of the poverty which had forced him to barter away his daughter for an insignificant sum. His anguish and despair when he saw Rangi was heart-rending. What a curse to be a parent in this position, I thought, when I saw him weep in unabated sorrow. Like a seedling struggling for life, Rangi’s face sprouted in happiness after her father’s arrival. Unspoken love showed itself in touching scenes of emotion and, time and again, Rangi said, ‘Appa, I want to come home with you. Take me back home with you . . . you will, won’t you?’ And Byrappa, the father, replied, sometimes in monosyllables and sometimes with a nod but never with the firmness needed to create confidence in the child’s mind. The next day, talking to us outside Rangi’s room, Byrappa poured out his tale of misery. He worked in the Biligiri Ranga temple on a meager salary of five hundred rupees a month. The marriage of his two sisters had been his burden and he had aged parents to look after besides his own family of eight. During the temple festival, he earned extra money by carrying pilgrims in the ‘dholi’ up the hills and in the rainy season, when there were no pilgrims, he wove baskets and mats at home. Utter poverty had made him place Rangi and her two sisters to work in families. ‘And now, the child asks me to take her back . . . how can I when I can’t assure her of even a morsel of food?’ ‘Then what do you propose to do?’ ‘I’ll have to beg Sheshappa to forgive the child and take here back into his home.’ His answer stunned us. Was this resignation or a determined will to live, I wondered. It looked like the half swallowed rat was destined to return to the rat snake, after all. Byrappa’s face showed the deepest, paternal pain as he said, ‘We cannot afford to pamper ourselves with emotions . . . a morsel somewhere is all we can hope for.’ I thought that no father would barter away his daughter if he could help 33 it. ‘Byrappa,’ my son said, ‘I’ll pay the same amount as Sheshappa . . . and something more besides, if you’ll take Rangi back with you.’ It took some time for Byrappa to understand what was said. Then, as he did, I saw the soft surge of happiness that comes from unfettered love. And, in my son’s face, I saw the fulfillment that comes from benediction. In both I saw the flame of humanity that keeps life going and an inexplicable peace pervaded my soul. I folded my hands offering joyous thanks to God.