Bes: An Excerpt from Ratan K Sambharia’s “Thunderstorm: Dalit Stories”

Born in Bharawas village, in the Rewari district of Haryana, the Hindi writer Ratan Kumar Sambharia has been living in Rajasthan for over three decades. Sambharia has written numerous books, including five short-story collections, and has edited a book on BR Ambedkar, whose political writing and activism made him an icon of the Dalit movement. Many of Sambharia’s works deal with the experiences of marginalised communities in India. His writing has been translated into several languages, including Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi and Sindhi. 

Sambharia’s book Thunderstorm, which has been translated into English by the academic Mridul Bhasin, is a collection of 15 stories that shed light on various aspects of Dalit life in a casteist society. The stories, many of them set in Indian villages, explore themes of poverty, discrimination and land ownership, as well as more personal matters such as love and family. The following story, titled ‘Bes,’is told from the point of view of Agani, a tribal woman who is left stranded on her way to the city of Udaipur. Agani averts danger by donning thebes—clothes, or appearance—of an upper-caste Rajput woman.

Agani sat on the concrete platform at the crossroads, her plight that of a motionless puppet whose string had been snapped or of an insect caught in a whirlwind. Numb with fear, she couldn’t see, hear, call out for help or weep. She sat there, surrounded by the echoing sighs of the forest.

She now cast a sidelong glance at the two men tottering their way towards where she sat, meandering along opposite sides of the road. One searched the shadows under each tree, examining its roots minutely, lest she be crouching there. The other kept hitting every tree with his lathi to dislodge her from the branch she might be clinging to.

The two men, Harji and Marji, were dead drunk and beside themselves with rage. Then suddenly, their ire gave way to joy. She was close at hand, they felt. She had given them the slip all right, but they felt it wouldn’t be long before they found her.

Approaching the platform, Harji looked up. His eyes swivelled around and blinked. Striking the ground with his lathi, he said, “We have walked a mile, scouring the jungle to find her, and here she is, the bitch, sitting right under our noses, bang in the centre of the crossroads!“

Harji twirled his moustache. Biting his lips, he said, “Hmm. Now let us find out where we stand.” He stared at Agani like a hunter sizing up his prey.

Terrorised, Agani tried to crawl into her very skin.

She was about twenty and of medium height and complexion—an average girl. She was quick to laugh and the smallest things drew chuckles from her. A perpetual smile hovered on her delicate lips like a fluttering butterfly. Her happy face radiated innocence. She would be getting engaged this Sunday. Having taken two days” leave, she had been on a bus heading home to Udaipur today, a Thursday. It had been impossible to fathom which had the greater momentum – the vehicle or Agani’s joy.

The bus had lurched as it passed over a pot-hole, shaking up its passengers thoroughly and leaving them with churning stomachs and aching spines. The vehicle had come to a standstill. The conductor had stepped down, peered at the undercarriage and boarded the bus again, his expression one of helplessness.

Turning to the passengers, he had said, “Listen, the shaft has broken and we have to get a new one. The mechanic will have to be summoned to fix it. Only then will the bus move. Those of you who want to catch another bus to Udaipur can make your way to the crossroads.”

Agani’s heart had skipped a beat. Was this a trick of fate or a natural mishap? How unfortunate that this had to happen, especially now that she was on her way to participate in a happy occasion! Was it the shaft that had broken or her young heart? A tremor ran through this slip of a girl who was as delicate as a bud. Agani was now close to tears. Now what, she had asked herself.

It was 8 pm by then. The next bus for Udaipur was expected to arrive at the crossroads at a quarter past eight. Not a soul had been in sight. No transport either. It was a tough situation. She had got off the bus, clutching her heart with one hand and carrying a bag in the other. Ahead of her, flanking the road on either side, stood a row of teak and thorny trees, their branches intertwined overhead in an embrace, forming a kind of tunnel as far as the eye could see. It looked like an excavated mountain with its backbone removed. The headlights of every approaching vehicle looked like balls of fire to Agani. From time to time, she would lose her patience, then summon it back. Her fellow passengers were from nearby hamlets. They had remained seated in the bus, ready to be on their way once the vehicle was repaired.

Agani, however, had gathered the courage to step off. An educated woman was expected to be brave. Dressed in a pink saree and a matching blouse, her feet shod in sandals, a black bag in her hand, she was a solitary figure walking down a completely deserted road.

People from these parts were not unfamiliar with the evil deeds of passing truck drivers. They were known to prey on women travelling on these roads at unearthly hours and they would force them into their vehicles. The following day, the woman would be tossed out – dead, half-dead, conscious or unconscious. If she hid in the jungle to escape her tormentors, wild animals would attack and devour her, not even leaving a trace of her bones. There were so many predators – hunters of birds or beasts, on the one hand, and thieves, on the other. Agani found herself trapped between the devil and the deep sea. She could expect no mercy from one, no compassion from the other. Oh, Mother! What on earth would she do now?

Agani’s mother Hugana was around fifty years old. After her husband’s death, she had protected her children with the tender care of a bird incubating its eggs. Right now, there was no electricity in the house. Hugana sat on the doorsteps of her home, lamp in hand, waiting for Agani to arrive. Two of her sons were indoors. Hugana’s eyes never wavered from the road leading up to her house. She imagined her daughter to be prancing homeward, moving with the gait of a peahen. Her eyes welled up and her lips puckered with worry as she waited. Her heart soared with hope and sank with disappointment at the same moment. Her Agani was going to be betrothed two days later. She looked up hopefully at a sound. It turned out to be a cat.

Agani's phone call had come at 5 pm. Hugana kept going over the words her daughter had uttered before setting out: “Ma, the tailor has wasted a lot of my time setting the hem of my garments. Now I will have to take the last bus home this evening. Yes, this very evening. Keep dinner ready for me.”

Filled with frustration and anxiety, Hugana smote her forehead repeatedly. “I had forbidden you to wear such clothes, daughter!” she lamented. “Only Rajput women wear them. I had warned you not to flout tradition. I had urged you to abide by the strictures laid down by our own community.”

To this advice, Agani, a rebel from birth and stubborn by nature, had retorted, “Ma, the rest of the world has progressed to travelling in space. And look at us, trapped by norms that dictate what we should or should not wear, depending on our place in the caste hierarchy! I do not believe in such norms. I have always wanted such an outfit. And I am going to wear it for my engagement ceremony.”

The past hovered in Hugana’s mind. Her strapping husband had succumbed to chikungunya three years back. It was while working in the state education department in Udaipur that he had built their house. At the time, Hugana’s family had been living in a home with a terracotta-tiled roof in the midst of a forest in the foothills. They owned five acres of undulating land, much of it rocky and overgrown with brambles. Almost nothing would grow on its soil and it yielded very little. If there was water in the well, there would be grain for the family to feed on. If the well ran dry, however, the land would remain infertile and a mere glance at its barrenness was enough to bring tears to one’s eyes.

The forest had been everything for Hugana—helping her in her struggle for survival, providing a source of income – and as cherished and vital to her existence as her parents had been. For Hugana, leaving the forest to live elsewhere at her husband’s behest was as traumatic an experience as death itself.

When her father died, Agani was studying for her Bachelor’s degree. She had managed to get the job of a typist in a senior secondary school by applying for one of the few posts reserved for the financially underprivileged. But her workplace turned out to be located in a remote village, over 90 kilometres from the city.

Like a female monkey tied to the rope of time, Agani had moved on after the bus broke down, her manner subdued, her heart full of apprehension, her expression nervous, her eyes darting left and right, backwards and forwards.

I hope I do manage to catch the bus, she had mused. Ma must be dying of anxiety!

Huffing and puffing, Agani had reached the crossroads almost at a run and seen two men emerging from the shadows cast by the trees and positioning themselves in front of her. They were the same ones who had asked her earlier where she was headed, before moving on towards the forest. Both were under thirty, small-built and brown-skinned. They wore short-sleeved shirts, dhotis tucked up high and nickel bangles around their wrists. They also sported upturned moustaches. Judging by their build, complexion and gait, one could have taken them for twins. Reeking of country liquor, eyes gleaming with evil intent, both wielded staffs sheathed in iron.

Harji had approached Agani and brushed up against her. His eyes had roved over her body as if he owned her. “You wanted to go to Udaipur, right?” he had said, laughing for no reason. “The bus has left.”

Harji and Marji’s eyes had bored into the tattoos on Agani’s slender arms.

Fifteen years back, Hugana had got the tattoos done on her daughter, with the girl sitting on her lap. Who could say if it was a tribal custom or a mother’s love that had prompted the decision? The needle had not hurt Agani as much on that day as it did now.

Like a hunter whose focus is always on his prey, the savage instinct in Marji’s eyes, too, had hardened as he peered at Agani. Resting his chin on top of his staff, he had said, “We have asked a truck to stop by and pick us up. We will be going to Udaipur too.” Then he had snapped at the other man, “Harji, why are you hanging around like a spare part? Bring the truck around. We’re getting late.”

Scratching his palms, Harji had gone off to fetch the truck, while Marji mapped Agani’s body with his gaze.

Standing motionless and silent, as though she were lifeless, Agani had heaved a sigh of helplessness. Men are ready to die for gold and women. In a deserted place like this, the gleam of pure gold and the lissome beauty of a woman’s body were adding fuel to fire.

The truck had arrived. Agani began to tremble. She was overcome by dizziness and her eyes nearly rolled back in her head. It was the same truck whose driver had crossed all limits of decency in his eagerness to have her climb into his vehicle and sit beside him. Agani had been on the point of taking off one of her sandals to land a blow or two on him in self-defence.

Now they were all conniving against her—the driver, his helper, Harji and Marji.

“Oh, Agani,” she cried inwardly, “now you”re finished!”

Frightened, she had surreptitiously moved away from the moonlit road into the truck’s shadow. From there, she had sneaked into the dark zone of a cluster of trees close by. Born in the forest, Agani knew its shapes and shadows, its very soul, through and through. She was aware that at nightfall, wild animals emerged and the law of the jungle prevailed.

In spite of her predicament, Agani was no coward. She knew that there could be a hundred solutions to a problem. Even a straw could save a man from drowning. Like a cat in hiding, Agani had concealed herself behind the cluster of shops. The truck had moved off, leaving Harji and Marji wringing their hands in frustration.

Their inebriated state had made the two men lose all semblance of sanity. They were greedy with desire. And their target was now the woman sitting on the stone platform.

“Oh, Ma!” Agani sighed.

Seated on her doorstep at home, Hugana suddenly opened her arms wide and exclaimed, “Oh Agani, my daughter!”

Harji and Marji’s eyes were wild with evil intent that could not be contained. Like two soldiers marching in step, they moved in on her.

“Now, get up,” Marji ordered. “You have ruined the game!”

“Just pick her up.”

She did not stir at Marji’s command. The men were speaking their tribal dialect. Agani had lived in the city and her use of the rural dialect was full of Hindi inflections and overtones. It would be wise for her to keep her mouth shut. If she spoke out or cried, it would be all over for her.

Marji’s hands moved towards her.

“Thoo! Thoo!” Agani spat, her hand raised in warning and reprimand. With that gesture, the bangle on her wrist, along with her Rajput-style attire, was visible under the veil. Like a droplet of water sliding off glass, the two men instantly melted away.

Harji held his breath. Putting his finger to his lips, his voice betraying a combination of fear and regret, he said to Marji, “You fool!”

Marji grunted in acknowledgement.

“She is not a tribal at all,” Harji went on. “She is some Rajput’s wife. Look at her clothes—the lehenga, the kurti kanchali and the chundri. You are heading for death yourself and you’re bent on taking me along as well!”

Squatting on the ground with his back turned, Marji cupped his hands on either side of his eyes, as though shading them. “I am a fool, right?” he said. “I have no brains. Yours, however, are running away with you. The woman has simply changed into another set of garments.”

“Nonsense! She is a Rajput. The lady’s husband must have gone off to relieve himself.”

Marji’s eyes narrowed. “In spite of being tribals, we can’t sniff out our own people. I say, she is the same woman. Pick her up.”

“No, she is not! She is a Rajput. Imagine a tribal woman wearing bangles all the way up to her elbows!”

“C’mon, man, it is her!”

“No, it certainly isn’t.”

“Has the moonlight grazed on her and nibbled her up or has the forest devoured her?”

“She might be hiding behind the shops.”

Still in the midst of this argument, they walked away in search of their dream girl.

Agani sucked in a happy sigh, kissed the earth, praised the moon. She had survived. Anything unsavoury could have happened in the blink of an eye. She remembered her mother now and whispered, “Oh, Ma!”

From Hugana’s subconscious came the echo, “Oh my daughter!”

Soon, a huge truck, loaded with iron ore, stopped right in front of the platform, its engine growling away.

“Jeevan,” called the driver, drawing the cleaner’s attention.

“Yes?”

“Look what we have here! Don”t waste a moment or somebody might turn up. We are lucky guys.”

“Yes indeed.”

“Take the blanket along. Bundle her up in it and haul her in. Looks like good stuff to me.” The cleaner of a vehicle is more obedient to its driver than a subordinate is to his officer. A subordinate may disregard an order from an officer, but a cleaner will follow the orders issued by a driver without fail. With his strong, well-muscled body, the cleaner of this particular truck could have picked up a weight of two maunds effortlessly, as though it were no more than five kilo. Picking up the blanket, he ran to the platform and climbed it.

Agani sat there with her head bowed. Fear made every hair on her body stand on end, like a porcupine curling up into a tight ball and extending every one of its quills in self-defence.

“Get away from me!” she cried, “keep off…!”

Hearing Agani cry out, Harji and Marji ran towards her.

The cleaner had the dark complexion of an African. The two tribals ran towards him and landed a series of blows on him with their staffs. He dropped the blanket and fled from the spot like a cur with its tail between its legs, shouting, “They’re killing me! They’re killing me!”

In deference to what they assumed to be Agani’s high caste, Harji and Marji were respect personified. They covered her protectively with the blanket so as to ensure that not even her toes were visible. People passing by would have thought it was some beggar sitting there or, perhaps, a lunatic, a destitute or an ailing person.

Stepping back, they bowed to her and said, “Don”t worry, lady. Our woman is lost somewhere and we will be back after tracking her down.”

The moon was high in the sky now. When disaster strikes, it doesn’t confine itself to a solitary event. It is akin to the saucer-shaped cloud that was now building in the sky and growing larger and larger like the mythical Sursa by gathering the smaller clouds around it in its embrace. Soon, that one cloud had completely engulfed the moon.

Just as a thief needs a deserted area to operate with impunity, a jackal needs the cover of darkness to be on the move. And nothing is more appropriate for both than the midnight hour. Jackals hang around the outskirts of villages, close to roads and the sand dunes to scavenge. It is in these areas, on the outskirts of habitation or in the fields, that it might be possible for them to find a carcass to feed on.

Living as she had with her mother and her two brothers in a tile-roofed hut in the forest, Agani was used to seeing jackals every day. Jackals that were hungry, thirsty and had been separated from their pack would dip their muzzles into the family’s pitchers. Agani would drive them away, all the way to the hills. At times, she would aim arrows at them.

But now as jackals appeared and sat down to the left of the road and their howling and wailing intensified, she was terrified. Her breathing was uneven, almost ceasing at times before she inhaled again. Shivers ran through her body as though she had come down with malaria. Her expression was stony. Her blanket was thin and so were the clouds through which the moonlight filtered in. Shrouded in the blanket, Agani must have seemed like a dark animal carcass to the jackals.

A few famished jackals stealthily climbed on to the platform. They began tugging at the blanket. It slipped off her body and hung over the platform’s side, its corners wedged under Agani’s feet.

Without the blanket covering her body, it seemed to Agani as if she had lost a guardian’s protection. Cowardliness is transformed into boldness when a hapless victim is at hand. Agani kept clapping her hands together to ward off the jackals, but the animals were increasingly emboldened. How would she keep the scavengers at bay all by herself?

A motorbike suddenly braked to a halt as its rider witnessed the ongoing battle between the woman and the beasts.

“Oh, these wretched jackals have almost killed the lone woman!” he exclaimed.

The man was a hunter. A rifle was slung over his shoulder. Still sitting on the bike, he aimed it at the jackals. A spasm went through one as the bullet found its mark and the beast slumped to the ground, lifeless, and turned cold on the spot.

With the silence shattered and the night’s slumber disrupted, the forest awoke with a start. The earth shook under Agani’s feet. The wind had driven away the bank of clouds. The moon seemed brighter, more clearly visible, fearless. So radiant, in fact, was the moonlight that one could have threaded a needle in its beams. Trembling, her eyes eloquent with apprehension, Agani looked at the person who now stood before her. Six feet tall and of robust build, the man was in his early forties and sported a moustache. One of his eyes had suffered an injury and was damaged; the other was intact. His face looked like a cow-dung cake that had been pawed over with a hoof. For the first time in her life, Agani was face-to-face with such ugliness.

Agani and the hunter presented the picture of a sacrificial lamb laid before a butcher.

Agani, she told herself, you have been saved from the jackals, only to be devoured by a tiger! With neither life nor spirit in her, nor warmth nor soul, Agani had been reduced to no more than a chunk of flesh. On her fair complexion, moonlight glowed like a piece of crystal.

The man had hunted many a prey, but his experience today seemed surreal. He hung the gun over the bike’s handlebars and marched purposefully towards Agani.

Clutching her heart with one hand, she raised the other suddenly and shouted, “Stop!”

The woman’s shrill voice stopped the hunter—a man whose moves were the swiftest among the swift and who was capable of killing the biggest of big game—in his tracks. This was a man who kept company with Rajput clans. They were his clients and bought game from him. The lady sitting here seemed to be from one of the neighbouring villages. No doubt her husband had insisted that she wait for him here, while he was lying around somewhere, dead drunk or high on opium. The hunter realised that any ill intention on his part would merely bring dishonour to his name.

He asked with a touch of respect, “Lady, what is your name?”

The forest reverberated with nocturnal echoes. With each moment bringing danger in its wake, Agani’s tongue seemed stuck to her palate.

“Lady,” the hunter asked again, “are you from a village or a hamlet?” Caught between a lonely sky and a lonely earth, Agani sat lifeless. If she uttered a word, the truth would be out in the open.

The hunter’s conviction grew that this woman belonged to a landowner’s family. Elsewhere on this planet, women might be mapping the sky or soaring across it. But in Rajput families here, women neither crossed the boundaries of their homes nor removed the veils covering their faces nor even spoke in the presence of a man who was not a member of their family.

The moon had begun to set. The night, too, was fading fast. The hunter went back to his motorbike and sat there like a sentinel, guarding the woman against anticipated dangers. Some wild animal might snatch her. A trucker could abduct her. Somebody might try molesting her. Let her husband return, he mused. I will teach him the lesson of a lifetime.

Agani glanced at the watch on her wrist. It showed 3 am. She touched the hands of the watch, driven by an urge to turn them so that the time indicated would be 6 am. Then she reasoned that by merely turning the hands, she would not succeed in making the earth revolve faster and hasten the advent of dawn. The bus would be coming soon, she told herself, and she would reach home safely where her mother waited for her.

The hunter peered at Agani and was beset by uncertainty again. His conviction wavered and he was on the verge of giving in to his baser instincts. Then he reaffirmed his faith in Agani’s presumed antecedents. No, no, no, he warned himself, she is a Rajput all right.

He went to a tap and washed his hands. Then he filled a bottle of water for her. The lady must have been waiting for a long time, her thirst unquenched. Placing the bottle in front of her, he said, “I have washed my hands and the bottle too. This is clean tap water. Just avert your face and drink it.”

Agani’s throat was as parched as a dried-up pond. Her innards on fire, she was seized by the urge to drink up all the water. Yet she did not even touch the bottle, lest by doing so, she betray the truth. The hunter was overwhelmed with rage. “These people would rather die than jeopardise the purity of their caste!” he said heatedly.

Sitting for hours on his bike, the hunter was overcome by the urge to answer nature’s call. As a woman was around, he proceeded towards a clump of trees.

By now, Agani had spent eight long hours sitting there. It was going to be 4 am soon. Hunger and thirst were far from her thoughts, as she sat covered in wet dust. She moved up a bit and went on sitting there, as before.

A speeding jeep braked so violently that the friction of its tyres left tracks on the road. Its occupants, a driver and a cleaner, were less concerned about picking up passengers in the dead of night than in engaging in unsavoury deeds like robbery. The driver gestured to the cleaner, a tribal.

The latter shook his head apologetically. “Sir, she is no tribal woman,” he said. “She is a Rajput. I beg of you, don’t force me to touch her. If I do, a curse will befall me.”

This was the first time ever that the cleaner had refused to obey the driver. Earlier, if so commanded, the cleaner would even have met a bull head on without demur. The driver gritted his teeth. “You fool! What’s the difference? Be it a Rajput or a tribal, a woman is a woman. Be quick.”

Intoxicated by liquor and lust, the driver was not in his senses. He took out a pill from his pocket and held it under Agani’s nose, expecting her to fall unconscious as she inhaled its smell. Agani flung it away.

Inflamed to the core, the driver, a strong young man in his mid-twenties, glared at her fiercely and began rolling up his sleeves. Then arms outstretched, he made to lift Agani off the platform by holding her under the armpits. A resounding slap landed on his cheek from behind, making the driver see stars. His jaw began to bleed.

The hunter’s eyes locked with the driver’s. They were used to plying on the same road.

“You bastard!” said the hunter, “you won”t even spare your own caste or clan. Get out of my sight or I’ll shoot you!”

Like a defeated wrestler retreating from the ring with flailing arms, the driver wrung his hands with regret and went back to the jeep with the helper.

Every pore of Agani’s body was seized by tremors. She wished the earth would split open so that she could burrow deep and hide there. If only she had wings, she could fly off to her mother and bury her face in her sari. Every passing moment seemed to be leading her in the direction of the gallows. Terrified, Agani pulled her clothes more protectively around her, shrinking further into herself.

Sitting astride his bike, the hunter was dog-tired, his eyes weighed down with drowsiness. He did not notice when the eastern sky turned pink and the light of dawn began to spread across it. Agani pulled her bag from between her thighs. Quietly, she slid off the platform. With long strides, she sought refuge behind the shops.

Soon, a bus came along, honking its horn. Standing among the passengers was Agani – dressed in the same clothes she had worn earlier.

Defeated, Harji and Marji went and sat down on the stone platform, wringing their hands and alternately hitting their staffs in frustration.

Their eyes fixed on Agani, who was now boarding the bus; they marvelled at the magical act she had performed.

Excerpted from Thunderstorm: Dalit Stories, published by Hachette India.